And This Poem, Too, for My Father

By Wendyrw619 @WendyRaeW

How It Came to Be that the Rook Took the Queen

                                                                                        for my father

You know, I never did see a coyote in town. 

Though I kept suggesting so, spinning tales

of link-gold eyes, a lowdown slink to distract

from the fact that I could not track how the rook’s

straight path could end in a hook or how to calculate

the area East of a hypotenuse.  No.

And I still do not know how to add by abacus

though I brought you one on more than one occasion.

But since I am no longer a young woman, it seems a good time

to come clean:  I did see a horse in a green velvet jacket

& an executioner’s eyeshade.  A clamour of rooks

on the grounds of the Tower of London.  And, in New York City,

they’ve got an aircraft carrier for show. But, why didn’t I tell you

about that?  About the blanched branches of the curly willow

and the sky dimmed half-dark and pink?  And, why

didn’t I tell you about when the cherry tree out front split

in two? That tree was fruit-barren but showy so it was as pink

as it would ever be.  The March rains kept on and it fell—

bustle up—like a fancy woman in a parade.  Why, then,

didn’t I tell you that? In the midst of all that saying

and not, still you shimmied  up the ladder, father,

oh father, knuckles creaking and pointing north, knees clanking

against the garage, you shoveled the gutters.  Even then, did you know

of the one hundred bulls Pythagoras ordered slaughtered

in honor of the theorem while I was down there holding the ladder

and holding forth about the dreamed-up coyote bedding down

in the peonies  and slipping  the Thanksgiving carcass

off the porch?  Did you know that he—Pythagoras,

not the coyote—was reputed to have a golden thigh?

I know you know it’s bad luck to hang a calendar

before January the first, to light three cigarettes

on one match, to plant seeds in the last four days

of March. And you’ll recall, father, that Judas Iscariot

was the thirteenth banquet guest.  For that, Herbert Hoover

wouldn’t tolerate dinner  for one more than twelve.  No,

they hired a stand-in.  Father, you goodly mathematician,

do you believe me  when I tell you I never knew til now

that squared as in three squared is nine as in four squared

is sixteen as in a-squared plus b-squared meant a thing?

No.

But, slowly now, the rooks and you are gone silent in this frayed

afternoon light & I can see the roof’s pitched peaks casting off shadows. 

Squares.  Ah, squared.  As in nailed together four-sided, solid-square.

And suddenly Pythagoras & his smoky bulls & his prohibition

against the eating of meat & even beans & the shimmer off the roof

& the use of the abacus to teach math to the blind, it all comes together. 

And I can see the chess-rook make a hooked move toward the queen

and a ladder leaning south is most certainly a sign of love.