It starts out quite simple With little piggies going to market Whether with fingers or toes We start with almost pure decimals Eight fingers + two thumbs Or on the feet a perfect ten We reach our first twenty With adding and subtracting Tapping the fingers on the desk Squeezing those toes in our shoes Writing what is correct on the test These digits are a comfort Such fine names as Whole or Natural But numbers will not stop there They desire to be multiplied and divided Fractioned and still called Rational Yet, some lose their hold and Never come to an end, their numbers change To dot - dot - dot, just think of π…………………. Others go wild and mix with letters and [{(brackets)}] And other symbols far away from those familiar ten shapes- Algebraic, trigonomic, becoming irrational But not before they make us crazy In word problems of two trains, at two speeds Racing down two tracks, we must find when They’ll meet in a deadly crash of amounts Time, speed, and space lead to great doubts. Then we find physics to spin our heads around Numbers infinitesimal down a deep well below zero Or rising up out into the cosmos to infinity Exponential numbers crown their heads And leave us spinning, lost above the clouds Feeling as if we are falling into a daze- But savants have no problem and tame them- I, alas, remain with my fingers and toes Two dozen I can still figure out But three or more is beyond my reckoning And maybe in the end it doesn’t really matter There might only be a pair that gives us our existence You never know, we may end back at zero and one And find out that we have lived in only a simulation - Nothing but:

01100001 01100010 01100011

Our Universe: a binary dream or +, -, x a nightmare of numbers…