The Unsolved

They are like the stars we cannot see by day,
there all the time,
dense and heavy with truth.

They sit in the back of the room.
They do not raise their hands.
They do not look at the board.
They do not care about the bell.

They have names like Goldbach,

Riemann, Collatz.
As if that would make them come when called.

We build cages of logic.
We sharpen our pencils until 

the lead turns to dust.
We fill blackboards with traps.

But they remain sitting there.
Quiet as stone.
Looking out the window at the rain, 

which needs no proof.

They are not hiding.
They are simply waiting for us 

to grow clever enough to ask the right question,

or old enough to stop asking at all.

We call it a mystery.
We call it a crisis.
But the math does not cry out.
The math does not feel lonely.

It is like the mountain
before the mapmaker arrives,
perfectly content to be lost.