untitled poem before bed

“Math is the language of the world,” you said after
I giggled to myself in wonder that I
the wordsmith
have a mathematician for a husband.

Thinking then of the wonder of
nonverbal communication
and always quick to doubt the significance of
numbers, quantities, lines, theorems,
I countered, “What about music? The swell of a symphony, the
quarter half whole notes
read by eager fingers and throats …”

But I had misunderstood
There I was thinking that math could bring
a world full of unhappy people
together in a sort of ecstatic harmony
but you had simply meant

That those doubted numbers, quantities, lines, theorems
control the wind, the arc of an arrow, the
flight of a bumblebee

that math rules the world.