Handing Down

Abstract

Handing Down Jim Tilley (bio) The target market must have been small—not many coffee drinkers want to start the dayholding a ceramic cup that makes all thosehigh school word problems in math look trivialcompared to the scribblings in thin white lineson the outside of the gray-green mug,not merely algebra and geometry, but calculusno less, and not even the more straightforwarddifferentiations, but multiple integralsunder changes of variables. Does any of thisrender the coffee tastier? No—that's the roleof chocolate powder, almond milk creamer,and vanilla oat milk mixed in proper proportions.The saddest part is that all these equations were easy to comprehend forty-five years agowhen my neural pathways were still pliable,not friable. Now, when I view the surfaceof the double cone, x-squared plus y-squaredequals z-squared, I think only of vanillasoft-swirl ice cream at the local Dairy Queen,a name that sounds rather odd in these times.But the real problem for me is to figure outin whose young hands I can place this preciousmug before I'm gone, someone to appreciatewhat's on the outside as well as the inside,to start the day with a fresh brew and a mindopen to the possibilities these equations allow,which, for too long, I've been unable to see. [End Page 16] Jim Tilley jim tilley has published three full-length collections of poetry (In Confidence, Cruising at Sixty to Seventy, Lessons from Summer Camp) and a novel (Against the Wind) with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. He has won Sycamore Review's Wabash Prize for Poetry. Four of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Copyright © 2023 University of North Dakota