Today's poem honors nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) and is found in a fine poetry collection by Mary Alexandra Agner, The Scientific Method.
After Math by Mary Alexandra Agner
Florence Nightingale, 1820-1910
Worth one thousand words, usually,
but thousands dead
were inked as a colored nautilus
with chambers counting corpses
by disease or sword or bullet.
Hold this shell to your ear;
hear only your heartbeat's echo.
Numbers never had such voice
until Florence drew
coxcomb wedges for the dead.
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