Sometimes familiar things that are very important are taken for granted. Many of us do that with numbers . . . California poet and artist Mary Fabilli (1914-2011) considered their importance in the following thoughtful poem:
Numbers by Mary Fabilli
What would I do
without numbers?
A 7 there and a 3 here,
days in a month
months in a year
AD and BC
and all such symbols
the track of time
and the magical fractions
5 to 12 (that's noon)
5 to 5 (bus for home)
segments
fragments
mysterious freedoms
will it be like that
5 minutes to death?
Fabilli's poem is on my shelf in Against Infinity: An Anthology of Contemporary Mathematical Poetry, edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp (Primary Press, 1979).
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