Discover the Fascinating World of Numbers with Mary Cornish ✨

I like the generosity of numbers. <br />The way, for example, <br />they are willing to count <br />anything or anyone: <br />two pickles, one door to the room, <br />eight dancers dressed as swans. <br /> <br />I like the domesticity of addition-- <br />add two cups of milk and stir-- <br />the sense of plenty: six plums <br />on the ground, three more <br />falling from the tree. <br /> <br />And multiplication's school <br />of fish times fish, <br />whose silver bodies breed <br />beneath the shadow <br />of a boat. <br /> <br />Even subtraction is never loss, <br />just addition somewhere else: <br />five sparrows take away two, <br />the two in someone else's <br />garden now. <br /> <br />There's an amplitude to long division, <br />as it opens Chinese take-out <br />box by paper box, <br />inside every folded cookie <br />a new fortune. <br /> <br />And I never fail to be surprised <br />by the gift of an odd remainder, <br />footloose at the end: <br />forty-seven divided by eleven equals four, <br />with three remaining. <br /> <br />Three boys beyond their mothers' call, <br />two Italians off to the sea, <br />one sock that isn't anywhere you look.<br /><br />Mary Cornish<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/numbers/