Hope the Numbers Help

Mona Chalabi signs off cheerfully,
Concluding another quantification

Exercise in punditry. I like her.
I liked Marilyn Vos Savant. I liked

The maddening and delightful
Monte Hall riddle's answer. I like

The comforting sense numbers give me
That the cosmos is, if not

Knowable, at least explorable, maybe
Even exploitable, albeit not by me.

Numbers permit a bit of synchronicity
Within the infinite divisibility that makes

Everything from nothing to nothing,
Permit that gush of fellow feeling

That in humans is tied to reward
Centers so tightly that, for instance, a joke

Understood or a sentence completed
In a foreign tongue sends a rush

Of neuronal accomplishment buzz
Into the heart of the marginal mind.

Numbers feel like the rough, original
Feral tongue of God, the she-wolf

Licking us foundlings in her wilderness
Preparatory to rearing or devouring us.

To be sure, we remain inept, the most
Adept among us purely paranoid

As Kurt Godel, refusing all sustenance
At the end of his incomplete timelessness.

We are not really feral. We are hopeful
Past hope or help, but we coordinate

Tricks well enough to want to be wild,
To want to howl in unison the end of time.

Numbers produced the fly-by of Pluto,
Our wink and a nod to our Charon.