The Number Line

Lynn Stanley

Infinite the teacher
says as she looks both
ways: the line of numbers
broken as light and long:
the sun’s gloss, a river,
a blue street she must cross. 
Forever, says the teacher
and the girl thinks and thinks:
before me and after,
past barn beam and rafter,
way up high and down low,
watch the evermore go,
past the river’s cut shore,
swing wide the unlatched door,
into darkness and old
star light. Negatives are
left; positives are right.

Lynn Stanley is a writer, visual artist, and teacher who has been a resident of Cape Cod since 1990. She received her BA from Smith College and is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry from the University of Michigan. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Cosmos 3, and other publications, and Gravity Claims Us, a chapbook of her poems, was published by Folly Cove Press in 1998. As Curator of Education at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, she has led the extremely successful Art Reach program. Her work on that program was recognized in 2013 with the prestigious National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, which was presented to her by First Lady Michelle Obama. A past recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Provincetown Cultural Council, in 2014, she was named Arts Educator of the Year by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod at the Seventh Annual Creative Community Awards. She resides in Provincetown, Massachusetts. More about her work can be found on her website www.lynn-stanley.com/index.html