4:45 a.m.
Brian Grimsley
UC San Diego
I keep writing things down
and then losing the pieces of paper
because individually the work isn't any good
but collectively it's enough to scare Clive Barker.
Now I study sequences and series
and spend much of my time
showing where things tend as
they approach infinity.
Infinity is strange.
There is no concept of
next to within its grasp
and yet it can be countable.
I keep studying math
because to me I have always
found myself immensely satisfied
when I come up with the right answer.
Now it seems the further I go
I find myself with less answers
and more questions and I only
hope that math will know.
I like the quiet of night
when the sleeping world
reaches its serendipitous pinnacle
and I can listen to no one talk.
In that delicate moment of the
restless yearning for rest I can
see answers on the insides of
my eyelids written in bright
flashes of noen light.
The few times that I
switch on the lamp to write
them down, they are no longer
there to be seen.
--Brian Grimsley
4:45 A.M.
November 3, 1999