Two math lessons.

Grade 3
What belongs with what and how
do you name it. Now that's a math
I can do, I thought, opening to page 1,
the very beginning, the first
white crocus in the season of idea.
The gaggle, the pride. The happiness of that,
the ease, the luxurious narrative possibilities
of the geese, the crows, the family of smiling lions.
Until page 2: the hard birth of abstraction,
the transparent knife too heavy and sharp to use.
The practically invisible, snippy awfulness of the minus sign.
The black, gut-punching spaces opening
in the multiplication table, the utter
damnability of 8 X 9.
Now I am an astronaut cut loose from the physical ship
in my deflating silver suit, losing something
vital with every float-away, go-away,
get-away second.

Grade 9
I returned as the alien life-form of the 14-year-old.
Fell into the open hatch-door marked Factoring Out and found
something to love: working it out unto zero,
the weightless satisfaction, the clicking lock of
nothing more to do.

Five Poems by Jean Gallagher