Most mornings Caroline makes coffee, stokes the fire,
stirs pudding. She brushes down the brown horse,
hitches on a bridle and saddle, and rides two miles
to the marketplace. Back home, she works on tables
and diagrams, adds to an old star atlas, interested
in what others overlooked. She measures star by star,
the way she knits stockings stitch by stitch;
maps the night sky, noting precise locations
of celestial objects, their size, brightness,
how they change, and the dates of discoveries.
She starts with one fact, lets math unlock more.
Her hand pivots as she follows the rotation of planets,
including Earth, whose movement creates the shadows
we call night and the brighter tilt of day. She teaches
herself calculus, which divides movement
into smaller and smaller steps, useful to fit
the sky’s great circles onto paper.
Mathematics reaches like a wand that sweeps stars
to her desk, where she unfolds the light.