The Mathematics of Ecstasy
- The Mathematics of Ecstasy
This is the week I discover the pitchOf the blue whale’s songs is getting lower.This is the week a neighbor, his wife deadA month, swallows his car’s exhaust afterHe recycles glass and plastic as ifSustaining a contract with the future.
This evening, mosquitoes swarm, their numbersSwollen by September’s record rain,And I know that science has learned these pestsChoose mates who can harmonize perfectlyWith them, duets enhancing the couplingsThat bring some small equivalent of joy.
The shivering light of autumn assuresTheir coming absence. The house of the dead,Two doors down, lies dumbstruck. Such vanishingShadows us as we touch, fingers trailingAlong each other’s chilled, bare arms, contentWith the familiar. Our nerves, research proves,
Produce the greatest pleasure when stroked atFour to five centimeters per second,Though just now, I cannot mention this, notMeasuring distance and speed, ignoringThe mathematics of ecstasy,Loving the beautiful discord of desire. [End Page 65]
Gary Fincke’s Bringing Back the Bones: New and Selected Poems was published by Stephen F. Austin University Press in 2015. His latest collection of poems is After the Three-Moon Era, winner of the Jacar Press Poetry Prize. He is the Charles Degenstein Professor of Creative Writing at Susquehanna University.
