Dipping graham crackers in milk or munching on apples,
Vera works on math that reflects forces on paper
and sometimes suggests other powers that cannot be seen.
She helps a friend with homework.
Alice puts down her pencil and complains,
I thought astronomy would be easier
than other sciences, but there’s so much math.
And Professor Makemson is weird. What are those charms
and stone carvings doing in the observatory?
She researched astronomy and religion in China and Egypt,
Vera says. And won a Guggenheim fellowship
to study Mayan astronomy.
Whatever that is. Tell me more about the boy
who takes the trolley to visit you here on weekends.
I hope you’ll invite me to the wedding.
He doesn’t visit every weekend. Vera blushes. And I don’t know
about marriage. I want to keep studying astronomy.
You can’t do both, Alice says. You can be like Miss Mitchell,
who never married, or be a wife and mother.
Professor Makemson has children,
but she got divorced. A woman has to choose.