Welcome to Verdugo Online's Poet's Corner featuring:

George Raabe

"Solving Fermat's Last Theorem"

George Raabe is a retired engineer whose hobby is mathematics.  Besides this, he collects bola ties and writes both formal poetry and experimental verse.  George has spent years of leisure time attempting to discover the elegant proof that another math amateur-at-home but the King's magistrate-by-day in Toulouse broadly hinted concerning an equation both simple-looking and of elusive difficulty.  The problem was solved in 1995 by English mathematician, Dr. Andrew Wiles, with two hundred pages of thorny proof.  When George makes his presentation, though it shall not be the first, it will be the shortest proof of  Fermat's Last Theorem . At present it is neither windproof nor water tight, says George.  To illustrate his own work on FLT, George needed a template to trace ovals similar to the Mazda logo.  A doll's tea set saucer gave the right size and shape.  From this first item, over the years, George has assembled a truly world-class object d'art hobby collection of four-sided ovals with softened corners of integer degree in silver, crystal, or ceramic.

To Fauna and Flora

A teacher from Germany opened up my eyes
To the Foothill glory above old Van Nuys.
We wandered slopes that fed Tujunga's wide wash
Gathered there the hopes that city builders toss.

Among old landmarks, we counted them all,
Pappy Keef, Tom Lucans, Wickiup recall *
Each habitat does beckon,
The horny toad is sprawled,
Our Pilgrims' Day picnic up Mount Lukens has enthralled.

Still in retirement we shall go there again
To crests of those mountains,
To the waterfalls' deep din
Still feasting upon sunsets,
Still singing in the rain
Listenin' while coyotes call these mysteries still explain.

If you've been cursed for lust for gain
Don't go down to the station to leave on the train.
Come up to the foothills where Bolton will cheer
New commerce will broaden, new friends shall endear!

*these are names of campsites

 
Indian Summer
 

Fetch a parasol, Jane
Autumn's coming down!
Orange, rose, russet, brown,
Stained with crimsoned vein
All the trees in town
Are sprinkling leafy rain.
 
 

If we were hoarders like the elves
Leaves we'd store on pantry shelves.
In tubs and boxes, wide and deep,
Autumn's wealth we'd heap.
Or throw doors and windows wide
Letting in this precious tide.
 
 

Perhaps out-of-doors we'd move,
Into paradise forever stray
Revel in this nascent love
O'er these dominions sway
Rulers without crown or glove
In a Fall more luminous than May.

 

Visit these sites of
Past Featured Poets:

Marlene Hitt,  Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga
Shari Borders,  "Singing in Tongues"



 
 

All poems appearing in The Poet's Corner are under the copyright protection of the authors.  Writers who wish to submit works to The Poet's Corner do so with the implicit understanding that the poems sent are copyrighted as their original works.