The Math Professor

for George Mackey

When the new moon was bounded
by circular arches, I drew its outline
in the soft red dirt of the Depression.
As if I were Hippocrates of Chios,
I made that lune symmetric and known.

But when the pitch came over the plate,
a fast and serious full moon, I couldn't
catch it; then large boys would beat me.
I begged to go to camp, prayed
let me learn to hit, to slide into bases.

Euclid had me running breadthless length,
the line from home to first inscribed
in the vacant spaces of my tenth year.
Nights, curled next to the antenna. I cheered
line drives all fields, brilliant shortstop catches.

Now, with chalk in the creases of my palms,
I construct right angles precise as diamonds,
find the area of arcs that ache like a long fly
in the ninth. My theorems oiled and broken
in, a sure glove, me a Roger Hornsby.

Deborah Bacharach
Pinyon Review, Fall 2014