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numbers - mary cornish lyrics

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i like the generosity of numbers
the way, for example
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room
eight dancers dressed as swans

i like the domesticity of addition–
add two cups of milk and stir–
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree

and multiplication’s school
of fish times fish
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat

even subtraction is never loss
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two
the two in someone else’s
garden now

there’s an amplitude to long division
as it opens chinese take-out
box by paper box
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune

and i never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four
with three remaining

three boys beyond their mothers’ call
two italians off to the sea
one sock that isn’t anywhere you look

- mary cornish lyrics

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