Square Root of -1

Dr. Moor, Professor of Epistemology,
Theology, as you say:
man invents everything –
the five o’clock traffic, especially.

I concoct at age 45,
approximately one suburbia,
children throwing balls,
one out of grasp, rolling to the street.

Logic constructs by formula:
1) the elbow bone nudging against flesh;
2) the son-in-law in business:
Thus, Dr. Moor,

an Aesthetic question for
the Wednesday afternoon seminar:
Did Michelangelo see clearly the eternal
distance, separating fingers?

The automobiles I create going home collide,
brakes squeal, gears grind, I am bumper to bumper.
Then, between parked cars, a dog darts
into the street. Dr. Moor, years you taught me:

a) there exists the imaginary number,
b) at a 30° arc, c) between wrecked fenders.
Like around the neighborhood after dinner,
faith out walking a human heart.

Paul Dickey won the 2015 Master Poet award from the Nebraska Arts Council. Paul Dickey’s first full-length poetry manuscript They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January 2011. His poetry and flash have appeared in Verse Daily, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Southern Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Pleaides, 32Poems, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other online and print publications. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace, was published by Pinyon Publishing in October 2013. More info is available at the author’s new website: http://pauldickey9.wix.com/paul-dickey