Dorothy Livesay -- Mathematics poem

[David Dalton]

Here is a poem by Dorothy Livesay from her book
of selected poems, The Self-Completing Tree.

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Mathematics

I want to play the great game, darling
but only you can play it to perfection:
Much talk..no bed. Some talk..some bed
no talk..all bed; and talk tomorrow.

I meant to play the great game, darling
and hold your bones deep to the root of one
I meant to play the great game, darling
but the heart for it is gone.
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How do you interpret the poem? In my book I
wrote down lemniscate root of one, perhaps
related to my theory of lemniscate time, but I
have crossed it out. I also wrote down eighth root
of one, where one can be expressed as
e^{2*n*pi*i}, and there are eight eighth roots of one
(there are one two square roots, 1 and -1).

Of course the heart could also be a cardioid.

I’ll think about it some more but just wanted to
put it forward for discussion for now.

Is anyone else on here familiar with Dorothy Livesay?

Followup-To set to alt.arts.poetry.comments .

--
https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page)
"And the cart is on a wheel; And the wheel is on a hill;
And the hill is shifting sand; And inside these laws we stand” (Ferron)