Jose Padua: When We’re Dancing the World Feels Like Higher Mathematics

When we’re dancing the world feels
like higher mathematics, equations
of irrational numbers that exist in
the real world the way ghosts haunt
dark abandoned buildings on the edge
of town. It’s the times we talk, nights
we walk by them like wire walkers
at great heights, and those numbers
of days when there’s nothing and
we divide it by the occurrence of nights
when we think we might see, or could see,
something that equals a frequency
in which time is a circle and incidence
a diameter. Sometimes a ghost is
the number you can only approach
from around the corner when your hands
are in your baggy pants pockets, which
is why it’s so hard to run in your dreams
when you’re trying to get away from
bad guys. We sit still, or stand back
in the stillness of the ancient aether
even as our souls swirl and twist like
rivers and streams and wandering gusts
of wind when we’re not dancing.
And we lie down in the deep where
numbers are not for counting because
we have traveled too far to simply
walk home, and the infinite becomes
less abstract the more we move.

—

Copyright 2015 Jose Padua

— Photograph by Jose Padua