Who decided that every snowflake would have six points?
Or, that the mourning dove would always lay two eggs in each clutch?
Why not three? Why not one?
Halite, common table salt, is composed of perfect cubes.
The cup of a tulip is shaped like a star.
It’s all math, you see? But where did it begin?
And why does it matter?
Surely, the earth in its forming
did not have time to plot out the ribcage of a wolf
with its perfectly aligned twenty-four bones.
Nor, that a cherry tomato would have sixteen seeds,
while a peach, only one pit.
And besides, isn’t the joy attained from a tomato,
the bliss received from a peach,
immeasurable? The feeling one gets
from the juice and the dribble,
it is never in a straight line.
Joy is like that. Not one, not three,
not square, not spherical.
So is this the answer? To all the math, I mean.
When it comes to the alms of the earth,
no matter who the original hand, is order required?
Exactness, a necessity? And if not,
what would offset the disarray of our inner jubilance
each time we see a snowflake sashay to the ground?
A wolf dart across the road, breathing through its twenty-four ribs?
Each breath, a one of millions?
How would we ever keep our balance
amidst such ecstasy?