Celebrate math students -- a Fibonacci poem!

     South Dakota mathematician Dan May teaches mathematics at Black Hills State University where he also leads workshops for middle school teachers, explores musicology and the connections between poetry and discrete mathematics. He has been involved in math-poetry activities at Bridges Math-Arts conferences but, more importantly, he has been involved with BEAM (Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics), a program offering varied academic assistance to underserved students, including a summer residential program. The following Fibonacci poem celebrates that adventure.

BEAM: A Fibonacci Poem     by Dan May

Now
you 
are home — 
Brooklyn, Queens, 
the Bronx, your boroughs. 
Only yesterday still at camp, 
learning knots and graphs, writing proofs on infinity. 
I taught you the one hundred and sixty-eight automorphisms of the Fano plane. 
You wear hijabs, or Jordans, or both. Diverse faces 
display the doubts of twelve-year-olds. 
But each of you, when 
you get it — 
your face 
lights 
Up.

Author’s Note: The poem’s syllable line count follows the 

Fibonacci sequence numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 forward and backward.  

This poem and several others of Dan May's math-linked poems may be found here.