Math Lessons

I flunked tenth grade algebra,
and you never believed me
when I said it was because you stole
the abacus of my heart.

Right. I got it -- that sounded like
a line of bullshit, but it was true.
We were standing on the pavilion
by the school pond, out behind
the school barn. Remember

when you let me kiss you?

I gave you the Gideon Bible
I carried in my back pocket.
I gave you my only cassette
of AC/DC's Back in Black,
remember?

In my old man's pickup, we played
"You Shook Me All Night Long"
all night, like until morning,
until the last beer, at least.

You were dancing in the headlights;
I was standing in the shadows.

I wanted you to teach me
the secret of decimal fractions.
I wanted you to teach me
the infinite values of Pi.

You taught me
the history of mathematics
is not smooth and continuous.
You taught me
that some answers
have no questions.

Maybe somewhere you
saw me piss behind a horse barn.
Maybe somewhere
you remembered a blacktop road
where Galileo rode a leather-mouthed
pony, a short-haired Shetland.

Rough-neck farm trucks
shouldered that road, and the ditch
was deep. Maybe you told me
Galileo tossed empty beer cans
and a fist of pennies, one-by-one,
all along the way.

Maybe you knew
why he rode that pony.
Maybe you knew why
the pony walked that road.
Maybe Galileo called for you,
Marina Gamba.

Maybe you

taught me that night
the one-to-one relation between all
integers and perfect squares,
between finite qualities of lust
and infinite equations of love.

Next day at the dinner table,
my dad tossed me my wallet
and watched me count
six wrinkled Washingtons.

If you take your pants off in my truck, he said,
don't leave your wallet on the floorboards
when you put them back on.