Opposites -- in Life as in Mathematics

       Recently on NPR I heard an engaging interview with poet Kevin Young about his new collection Stones -- about memory and loss, and connection to the past -- and my interest led me to search online for more of his work.   At the Poetry Foundation website I found twenty of Young's poems, including this one which considers -- as mathematics also does -- pairs of opposites.

     Negative        by Kevin Young

       Wake to find everything black
       what was white, all the vice
       versa—white maids on TV, black

       sitcoms that star white dwarfs
       cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents,
       Black Houses. White horse

       candidates. All bleach burns
       clothes black. Drive roads
       white as you are, white songs 

       on the radio stolen by black bands
       like secret pancake recipes, white back-up
       singers, ball-players & boxers all

       white as tar. Feathers on chickens
       dark as everything, boiling in the pot
       that called the kettle honky. Even

       whites of the eye turn dark, pupils
       clear & changing as a cat's.
       Is this what we've wanted

       & waited for? to see snow
       covering everything black
       as Christmas, dark pages written

       white upon? All our eclipses bright,
       dark stars shooting across pale
       sky, glowing like ash in fire, shower

       every skin. Only money keeps
       green, still grows & burns like grass
       under dark daylight.

 Learn more about Kevin Young and his poetry here at his website.