Spring — Dan Spier

Poetry

Some people might say that I am a rhymer rather than a poet. I have had the ability to make rhyming lines fairly easily, but I like to think that my poetry has more in it than just rhyme. I love imagery–the sights, sounds, smells, feels and movements of natural things, and I try to make my poetry very concrete and real. For some reason, funerals have been a very large part of my poetic efforts, I suppose because poems celebrate a life better than mere speech. At any rate, I have included some poetry here, and I hope you like it. As always, the subject matter is very diverse.

Here is a poem I wrote while Molly, my wife, was teaching calculus. Her students had told her that they did not understand poetry: that the subject matter was so obscure, meaningless, and irrelevant. She replied that poetry could be about anything. They rebutted by saying, “Right! I suppose you could write a poem about mathematics!” Taking the challenge, she said, “Yes, you could write a poem about math.” “Let us see one then,” they countered. Molly came home and told me the story. “Is there some way we can make a poem about math?” she queried. I said, “Well, if you will help me with the terminology, I will try.” Here is what we came up with.

TRIGONOMETRY
By Dan Spier

There is nothing in life so darn hectic
As a brain in a course trigonometric.
I had much rather study invasions
Of Vandals and Huns than equations.
And especially ones like quadratics!
They’re fit only for fools and fanatics!
While my social life sits and relaxes,
My dumb brain is a blur of Y-axes.
Even tangents and points of inflection,
Make me suffer a loss of direction.
While derivatives—both first and second,
Are a little bit more than I reckoned.
When old fractions turn inverse proportions,
My sinuses go through contortions.
My domain is as strange as an ocean,
And my slope and my range? I’ve no notion!
I think radians are tires for one’s auto,
And determinants words for one’s motto.
Logarithms sound right for percussion,
And matrices good for discussion.
But my function’s velocity’s dropping,
And I sense by acceleration stopping.
My vertex’s endpoint—it dangles,
As I’m swallowed in huge right triangles.
All my maximums minimum weakly,
As my anti-log poem ends bleakly,
I guess if one thinks perpendiculous,
Trigonometry’s not so ridiculous.

If Spring is so dogwood exquisite,
I’m compelled to ponder, “Why is it?”
When the world is all dusted chartreuse,
I grumble aloud, “What’s the use?”

When sinuses sniffly are suffering,
And headaches are begging for buffering,
My cry for eyedrops is quite urgent:
To most of this Spring I’m allergent

I suffer great waves of hysteria
When lavender blooms of wysteria
Assault me with tangled euphoria
And pungent sweet odors, O Gloria!

By then the red buds have dotted
The grey branches that winter had blotted
With delicate blooms not quite ruby
Less red, more purple, they would be.

Some finches are similar ‘tis said
The purple ones aren’t, they are red
But Nature can be quite confusing
When colors it opts for infusing:

For instance:

“Nature’s first green is gold”
Robert Frost wrote that I’m told
But how could he possibly know
With a name more common to snow?

Besides spring’s first color is yellow
Just look at the car of that fellow
Its once bright shiny red shimmer
The pollen has rendered much dimmer

And think of forsythias and daffodils
They promise early Springtime thrills
While pushing aside drifts of snow,
Seems to me quite inapropro

But enough of this negative blathering
I’m sure your anger is gathering.
“Who is this glib Prophet of Doom?
Who let him into this room?”

I wish my thoughts were more cheerful,
They might be if I were more beerful
Regardless, Spring is still welcome
It’s better than Winter and then some!

So, put on your nose plugs and goggles,
And listen to the crickets and froggles.
Enjoy the cold wind and rain showers
And dream of promised May flowers.