As I grew up on a farm, mathematics -- with planting depth-and-distance measurements, with counting of animals and fenceposts, with angles of tree-branches, and many other basics -- was important background knowledge. As I grew older and experienced more city-time, the mathematics I encountered was more complex. When I visit Pittsburgh or San Francisco or New York City or . . . I feel the geometry that surrounds me. And I was reminded of those geometric feelings when I recently encountered this poem:
Mayakovsky in New York: A Found Poem by Annie Dillard
New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.
For many hours the train flies along the banks
of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.
Bridges leap over the train with increasing frequency.
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