Category Archives: Poem

Counting

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I count

each step, each breath, 
each pull, or lift, or hold;

I count
in sets of two
or four, of five or eight or ten.

Quantifying movement,
we measure 
the time contained in the distance
or the distance contained in the time.

Quantifying expression,
we count letters, syllables, words, 
each sound, each metronomic beat –
rhythm bound
by number patterning. 

We record
the flash periodicity of fireflies,
ocean tides as they surge and ebb,
the pulse from spinning neutron stars. 
Our life’s measure
is the beating of our hearts …

a finite sequence of unknown length.

Illustration of the Theorem of Pythagoras for a 3-4-5 Triangle

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Notes:

32 + 42 = 52.

This poem demonstrates the theorem of Pythagoras for a triangle with sides of lengths 3, 4 and 5 units respectively. The poem consists purely of monosyllabic words with either 3, 4 or 5 letters. There are three stanzas, corresponding to the sides of the triangle. The first stanza has three lines of three words each (32 = 9 words in total), the second stanza has four lines with four words each (42= 16 words in total) and the third stanza has five lines of five words each (52 = 25 words in total).

Each word in the 3- and 4-line stanzas occurs only once. The 5-line stanza consists of all the words that make up the other two stanzas.

This poem is from my collection Triangles  (Penteract Press, 2023).

When the news broke

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When the news broke, we danced.
I danced beneath an alien sky.

Plants bloomed: I tasted guavas
firm and sharp upon my tongue.

Trees flung their roots into the air,
rivers reversed to flow uphill,

stars spun cartwheels, the moon 
embraced the sun and clouds

kissed the mountain when the 
news broke. Born in freedom, now

we owned our freedom. We clasped
our hands in prayer with the dead.

When the news broke, we sang.
I sang, softly, long forgotten songs.

‘When the news broke’ first appeared in L’Éphémère Review issue 11, August 2018. 

Elevenses

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Squeezed awkwardly between the round completeness
of 10 and factored convenience of 12,
11 is the odd one out. We don’t have
11 fingers or toes; we never buy
11 rolls, or eggs, or long-stemmed roses
for our lover. In binary notation
its digits become the three of us, on our
terrace with coffee and scones in the sunlight
and birdsong of June, while the radio plays 
Test Match Special and 11 extends its
parallel arms towards the unbounded sky.

This is a square poem: there are 11 syllables per line and 11 lines.

It was first published in The Book of Penteract.

Snails

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A

thin

slime trail

meanders

over the gravel

to my flowerbeds, where hostas

that I had tended so carefully have been reduced 

to tattered shreds. A robin perches among panicles of lilac as you approach

with buttered scones and coffee. Light slants through leaves, glistens the slime trail silver. Everything contributes to the dazzle of this day – even snails.




This Fibonacci poem was first published in The Fib Review Issue #41