So, calmly into the woods we went –
Ariel, my dearest friend.
waltzing in hollow fidgets,
anticipating in earnest sorrows –
for a proof beget of quarrel:
fallen gravely from the sun-stained willow.
Sun, yes, sun,
long past its zenith, drawn –
drowned in the leaves’ greenish hollows,
whose shadows
crowned your daunting furrows.
You say,
the sun’s a witch.
amorally yellow,
yellowing your proudest widget.
Stuck we have been today as any other day
by pressing problems on display.
Sure, deeper into the woods we went –
math, you, and me.
The sun’s a witch, and the leaves its cauldron;
the woods, her kaleidoscope –
a thousand little witches cast upon earth,
through pinholes in the swirling potion.
You ask,
how many sunny days do I have left?
I say,
one less.
In one month you’ll be seventeen,
a haunting tale well-known but rarely-chimed.
seventeen, nineteen, and no twin primes –
until you turn twenty-nine.
By then I will have passed my prime,
and the young man’s game
will no longer be mine.
Down by the sun’s demise,
shattered I wish, a premise;
whispered through generations, never proven,
only validated: by the old man in this game,
with a prophet’s eye.
Note from poet:
Minkowski walk is a tradition at the Ross Mathematics Program to saunter off campus every Saturday evening with our fellow colleagues and discuss mathematics as past scholars did. In that particular Saturday, I discussed the philosophy of aging and fear of losing intellect with my friend and colleague Ariel Minakawa.