Math Is Beautiful and So Are You

 Read on for a poem of love and mathematics! 

    This poem celebrates an upcoming wedding . . .  one of my two wonderful sons will be getting married next Saturday to a lovely and special woman -- and this delightful occasion also will bring a host of scattered family members together.  I am thrilled by all of this and offer, for readers also to celebrate, a lovely poem:

Math Is Beautiful and So Are You     by Becky Dennison Sakellariou

     If n is an even number
     then I'll kiss you goodnight right here, 
     but if the modulus k is the unique solution,
     I'll take you in my arms for the long night.  

     When the properties are constrained as well as incomplete,
     I'll be getting off the train at this stop.
     However, if there is some positive constant,
     then I'll stay on board for a while longer.

     When it says that the supremum deviates from the least zero,
     my heart closes off.
     But if all moments are infinite and you can hear me,
     I will open out for you.

     This sequence satisfies the hypothesis of uniformity,
     and because we know that approximation is possible
     and that inequality is an embedding factor,
     come, let's try once more.                          

Sakellariou's poem appears in the anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me.  
     I close this post with a few more words about love -- the familiar opening lines of  a long-loved sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)  -- and available, in its entirety, in Strange Attractors:       

     How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
     I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
     My soul can reach . . .

 Make time to celebrate LOVE . . . and mathematics!