A plain enough question, you might now have thought
But I’m willing to bet that there’s much you’ve forgot.
So put on your thinking caps and get out your tricks
And all of your skills with a-rith-m-e-tics.

This answer seems trivial to calculate
But how can we do so? Let’s speculate
You might say “add a half, and then a half more”.
But I could divide that one into four!

Then before that one-fourth, you must first add one-eighth,
And so on, and so on — I’m sure you can relate
When a seems-simple task ends up being no fun
With an infinite series of things to be done.

But lo! with convergence, no issue is this
(And besides, in the integers, “one-half” don’t exist.)
So we can continue, or perhaps re-begin
And find us an answer that (somehow) fits in.

So then back to the question, and the problem it states!
The copula¹ tells us that two things relate.
If we desire to make this equality true
The value of “What” is obviously “two”.

Inspired by Dr. Seuss.

Part of Poem-a-day 2012. Title donated by Martin C.

This entry was posted on September 11, 2012 and is filed under Creativity. Tags: Poetry, Math, Seuss, Poem-a-day 2012