From the writing group I attend called Dune Hollow.
Prompt Poem Jim Simmerman’s poem “Wheel” (I like his last name)
Prompt Words: bedroom, vested, structure, everything, head strong, ugly, shame, raw, true
Here goes:
Is it true that everything in nature has structure? Some free spanning, like tree branches reaching skyward, mirrored out of sight underground by the fanning roots. And some perfectly geometric structures, like the six-pointed snowflakes falling today. Or consider the ancient Sanskrit texts that expressed our basic equations, teased them out of the universal consciousness, by studying nature.
One of them later named the Fibonacci sequence-
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc. is simply derived by adding the last two numbers together to get the next number in the sequence.
(0+1=1; 1+1=2; 1+2=3; 2+3=5; 3+5=8…)
The ratio between each successive number, approx. 1.618, is also known as The Golden Ratio.
You are bored, what does this have to do with nature? The spiral arrangement of pine cones, the petals of flowers, the beautiful chambered nautilus- they are created in these patterns. The spirals start with the middle point and circle out in larger and larger curves.
Two hundred years before Christ was born, Sanskrit texts used the Indian Arabic numeral system to express this natural phenomenon. What begins small and spirals out in ever widening circles, which can be written as a formula- As our lives can be.
We begin at zero and expand out in units of time, circling the sun, increasing in age and wisdom. Born in the bedroom, we spiral around to die in a bedroom. Our orbits have brought us through weakness and strength, pride and shame, ugliness and beauty, loving kindness and withering hate.
At the end of this spiral- throw it all away- it was your lessons that you learned. Our past is a foreign country to the next generations who have their own beginnings and learnings and endings. They will begin again.
Irene Paine