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…