Numbers by Mary Cornish

Numbers

by Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.

The way, for example,

they are willing to count

anything or anyone:

two pickles, one door to the room,

eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—

add two cups of milk and stir—

the sense of plenty: six plums

on the ground, three more

falling from the tree.

And multiplication’s school

of fish times fish,

whose silver bodies breed

beneath the shadow

of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,

just addition somewhere else:

five sparrows take away two,

the two in someone else’s

garden now.

There’s an amplitude to long division,

as it opens Chinese take-out

box by paper box,

inside every folded cookie

a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised

by the gift of an odd remainder,

footloose at the end:

forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,

with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mother’s call,

two Italians off to the sea,

one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

This poem was published in Mary Cornish's book, Red Studio (Oberlon College Press, 2007). Before that, it was published in Poetry, June 2000.

Perhaps because I sometimes struggle with math I am fascinated by math poems (really--see how many I have posted on this blog!). I think, however, it goes deeper because math poems like this one go deeper; yes, this poem is "about" math, but look at the beautiful things it pulls from every day life and the very philosophical things it says.

In stanza one, we learn numbers are willing to count everything and everyone. Right there, a statement for inclusion, against all hateful -isms. We are starting broad here, with numbers.

We move to addition in stanza two. The speaker equates adding with safety and comfort (domesticity and plenty); both are shown with the example of part of a recipe.

Next we have multiplication, and a great image with some language play. You cannot miss all of the "b" words.

whose silver bodies breed

beneath the shadow

of a boat

Plus, the idea of things happening underneath the surface is a perfect metaphor for all good poems like this one. There's what is being said on the superficial/upper level, but there is so much going on underneath.

Stanza four is my favorite--the notion that substraction does not remove anything but only moves things to another place. Cornis uses another wonderful image here--birds moving to another garden. But think of this in a HUGE way--it is a tenet of almost all religions: when we die, we are not gone; we have just moved to a different place. For religious people, this is a source of great comfort, a feeling the poet has already alluded to.

Long division is the basis of stanza five, and it gives us fortune cookies with Chinese food take-out. But these cookies bring us, metaphorically, more comfort--there are many fortunes (not money, but futures) to be had.

The odd remainder is more division, and the speaker delights in her surprise when she finds something remaining, left out. That thing is footloose--such a great, underused word--rather than a pitiful leftover thing.

This stanza leads directly into the last one. The three remaining when you have 3 remaining numbers after dividing 47 become three specific images. These images are all so interesting to me, as they can be experienced as either comforting or unnerving. Children who are far from home? People going on an ocean voyage? That one sock that has mysteriously disappeared?

On the one hand, they have all left the comfort and safety of home, and are footloose in the world. They are all going on an adventure. There is nothing wrong with that. Maybe the boys are at summer camp or school or visiting relatives or are just two blocks away at the park. Most ocean voyages are safe and everyone is fine, so these two Italians are maybe a couple on a romantic cruise. Or the Amoretti brothers who rigged cars to be seaworthy and took to the ocean (there were 4, but maybe the poet thought there were 2?)? And that sock? It has escaped a life in which it has no control to wander underneath the surface of reality . . .

But we all know that bad things have happened to children. And the fact that Cornish makes the 2 people Italian--is this a reference to the Costa Concordia disaster? Another ship in which people died? And while that sock may be off having adventures, we are left frustrated by the lost sock and also wondering where all these errant socks go.

I prefer to think of the last stanza as comforting, as that is the direction the poet has pulled us throughout the poem. But one could make a case that the line in stanza six ("And I never fail to be surprised") sets up a major surprising turn.

What do you think? Leave a comment!

More on the Amorettis here.

More on Costa Concordia here. (And please support Wikipedia--they are under attack by those who wish to censor free speech and keep pushing abridged versions of history and politics in false narratives.)

More on Mary Cornish and more of her poems here.