A Poem: On A Serious Business Meeting

I was with a group of finance people

In a business meeting

They laughed at a full screen of numbers

That frightened me -

a slide of PPT filled up to the brim

with nothing but Arabic digits

in blue and green and mostly in red

made them sidesplittingly happy!

What was so funny?

What made their laughter so heartfelt?

I couldn’t share their joy or sorrow

I failed to get the wittiness of the numerals

I thought red was bad and green was ok

But they said not necessarily

I thought only funny things were laughable

But what was so funny about those ones and zeroes?

I was with a group of finance people

In a serious meeting

I lost my counting of the beans constantly

After careful calculation

I decided to give up —

they had their laughter

I had my pleasure

The meeting dragged on.

I wrote a poem.