Ordinary Numbers

Here's to the ordinary numbers, beginning with 1

That can add sensibly to all or any

Or even the other ones listed as some

Other cardinals ordinary--

It's just natural.

Here's to whole numbers that can be divided

Simply by presenting a divisor

And fractions averted by a decimal point invited

Along the way and none the wiser--

It's just rational.

***

Here's to numbers living consecutively

Each pair, between them, a world abstract

Of yet more numbers positively or negatively

Here's to the figures from which you can subtract--

Without the fear of meeting and crossing the zero.

Merely reversing the signs keeps all reason intact

On matching two-dimensional reciprocal vectors

With a mirror at its center to count them exact

And multiples via multiplication are product effectors--

It's an inventory with which you can deal, so.

***

Forget complex numbers

That use mathematic imagination

And the imaginary numbers that only encumber

As unreasonable, unreal, and unfounded improvisations--

And too conveniently additive.

They disguise themselves as multiplicands

With sly operations parenthesised asunder

Or multipliers where one of them understands

Square roots of a negative number--

Are you positive?

***

Fie on irrational numbers that can never measure up

In ratios of integers devised to be adaptable

But are too irrational if on a measuring cup

When you're trying to pour something measurably practical--

It's inversely irreversibly perverse.

Prefer instead the ordinary

Where divisors separate dividends

Tidily if not cardinary

Engendering the quotient one intends--

And commutatively do the reverse.

***

As my example I present the quotient of 3

When 12 mounts the 4 in numerated denomination

And puts two figures in the position to be

Happily ever after in fractional copulation--

In a numbered consortium.

We'd be lost at the corner, 41st and 2nd

If the only cardinals were purply ones in Rome

And coordinates couldn't be geographically reckoned

When trying to get hurdling to nowhere like home--

Ordinary cardinals--you can count on them.

***

There are no irrational countdowns to blast-off

Nor complex fingers to count on

Or imaginary accelerations to drive off

Or otherwordly ratios-and-disproportions--

Making inconsistent persistent.

But equating 4 x 2 to become a 2-by-4

As the Max size measure of Planck that defines

What hits you in the head in ordered pairs or more

When you stray off the ordinary number lines--

And that's a Constant