Last week master poet Galway Kinnell died (NYTimes obituary). One finds a detailed bio and a baker’s dozen of his best poems at the Poetry Foundation website -- do a search using the poet's name. Many of Kinnell's poems are about nature -- somewhat in the way that mathematics may be about science -- that is, he uses the images of nature to speak multiply of complex issues. Here is a poem about identity that includes several math terms.
The Gray Heron by Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)
It held its head still
while its body and green
legs wobbled in wide arcs
from side to side. When
it stalked out of sight,
I went after it, but all
I could find where I was
expecting to see the bird
was a three-foot-long lizard
in ill-fitting skin
and with linear mouth
expressive of the even temper
of the mineral kingdom.
It stopped and tilted its head,
which was much like
a fieldstone with an eye
in it, which was watching me
to see if I would go
or change into something else.
From Kinnell’s collection Mortal Acts, Mortal Wounds (Houghton Mifflin, 1980).
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