Sailboat Mathematics

     Celebrated on June 2 at the Joaquin Miller Poetry Series Washington DC's Rock Creek Nature Center, poetry by winners of the  Jacklyn Potter Young Poets Competition, sponsored by The Word Works, Inc.  One of these winners, Julien Berman, is a student at Georgetown Day School and a prize winning writer and accomplished violinist AND a member of the GDS Math team.
     Here is Julien's winning poem:

Sailboat Mathematics     by Julien Berman

A stretched canvas tarp
Not ungainly in style, but again not cut in a perfect polygon.
A wooden beam or two
Slung upwards and out, at ninety degrees.     
A slit box in the center
Inserted down and through, to make a perfect line, not a parabola
       or catenary.
A rushed first-class lever
Protruding out the back, pushed this way and that, a reflection 
       on the coordinate plane.
And fringed, taught chords
Not through a circle, but acting as hypotenuses for right triangles
A wedge
Parting the water, its graceful figure a pelican; or a snooty cormorant
Her bow
Turned up, a nose in scorn
More cloth at the top,
To signal what awaits.