Numbers

People say that numbers are cold;

They hold no creativity,

A set answer will soon unfold,

And behold: there is no way around it.

Maybe, that is true--

Each number has its place

In the steady march of arithmetic,

Algebra, recursion, and integrals.

But if you look closer,

You can see that those marching soldiers

Break free into more than one, two,

Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and zero.

Yes, two plus two equals four,

But that’s not where math ends.

Logarithms and amplitude power music.

Geometry is infused with art.

Many forces act on the blood,

Which pulses, rushing through

A filigree of veins that follow

Fractals, those smaller recursions.

Snowflakes and fractures

And webs of sound and light

Take mathematical form

As they weave blindingly together.

Every chemical reaction

And reading of the code of life,

Involves a balance, an order,

Chaotic but not.

Fluids and density have their form too;

Their movement grows

On basis of a hidden math

Connecting forces and nature behind the scenes.

And yes, numbers create models,

Which bring creativity,

But who is to say that within regularity,

Artistic form is stifled?

Are not numbers a language too,

Spoken in nature, by humans,

By thoughts, by universes?

Is the only art found in deriving them?

Mathematics simultaneously

Brings together chaos and order

In the unpredictable physical realm

Our clay jar selves live in.

Our languages, famed for creativity,

Are much like the language of math.

Language has its own regularity;

It must take structure before it is understood.

And both words and numbers

Are still growing and changing

In different reaches of their disciplines,

Grasping for things yet undescribed.

Words have not embraced

That quantitative realm

While numbers are confined

To the physical realm.

Although, don’t thoughts, like fractals,

Break into increasing subsets,

In similar structures, or smaller thoughts,

And beyond the reach of math, a new concept?

So, numbers don’t always converge to one thing;

Sometimes, they get infinitely complex.

Math’s intricacies present a quiet light

We must concentrate on to see.