Up and down and down and up and
right and left and left and right
the fly crawled on the plane of the tile,
diagramming seemingly empty space.
Ideas are arrested in words
before they become lost
in the sea of intervening thoughts.
Solutions of elusive equations
can also be arrested in space,
before they become messier
than the problem itself.
They can be caught in dots
fixed between the space of two axes,
get a permanent address
on a line of various solutions
of the same equation.
No mathematician would ever be
lost in the blinding alley
of infinite solutions to
a simple problem.
This was the grand revelation
made to Renee Descartes
when he saw that fly crawling
up and down and down and up
and right and left and left and right
on the plane of the tile
on the ceiling of his roof
as he lay in bed.
