Imaginary
Numbers
At first,
she existed
only as imaginary numbers do.
She evaded him like
the last digit of pi,
and for once, his calculator
was of no help.
He did not create her,
no more than the ancients
made the constellations,
but rather he
put a name to her,
drew her out of the dark.
After hallucinating about
the number e in nature
and in her curves,
he tried to integrate her,
to put her into a new
coordinate system:
she spiraled out of the paper
and at last embraced him.
Copyright © 2000 Jeana Jorgensen
