A math problem or a word problem?

     One of my recent poetry-finds has been the anthology Regreen:  New Canadian Ecological Poetry, edited by Madhur Anand and Adam Dickinson (Scrivener Press, 2009) and in it some small mentions of mathematics.  The following poem by artist and poet Erin Robinsong considers things big and small -- and observes some paradoxes. Is math the puzzle or the explanation or . . .?

SEED : CEDE   by Erin Robinsong  

Looking into the peach-pit, we find a vast spaciousness, as if actually looking into a pit –

A math problem:
A peach pit is weighed against
the year’s yield plus the tree: 
30 g, 900 kg.
Which weighs more? 

Poems that count: Eight Buffalo

     In mid-April at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, one of the sessions I attended and valued had the title " "Eco-Feminist Poetry, Intersectionality, & the End of the Earth."  In the midst of my concern about ecology and women is my addiction to mathematics -- and a poem by Cecilia Llompart started me counting.  See if you, too, count the word "buffalo" eight times during this poem; and shudder when you read the final word.

       Eight Buffalo      by Cecilia Llompart

       An obstinacy of buffalo 
       is not to say that the buffalo 
       are stubborn. No, not like 
       a grass stain. More that 
       the very bulk of one—