found in his basement after he died:
models, pieces of paper
twisted into smooth conch shells and seedpods —
his daughter said it was a hobby,
and the damp lines of newspaper print
said he was something with math
a family man with the personality
of pressed white shirts hanging
like thin cocoons.
some sheet of college-degree paper
must have let him
compute the curves of a rose
and this paper wineglass
is just as flat as the page
of lines of numbers and lines from graphs — says it’s natural
that the elegant mathematical theorems of paper
make these forms.
then, there was the obligatory home office,
and the sheaves of paper
covered in lines —
of doctor’s writing
of molded English major’s writing —
rustling and spreading across the floor
making sweet susurrations
on the white tile.
“I don’t claim to be an artist,” he had said,
“I don’t even know how to define art.”