O
I
am
not
going
anywhere
unaccompanied
by life’s patterns: a whorl
in a pinecone, branches on oak or elm trees, 
the petal count of a daisy, the helix at the heart of a chrysanthemum,
the shell of a nautilus swimming in the ocean. A sequence hides in the shape of probabilities, and in my own DNA.
 

In this poem the number of letters per line is determined by the Fibonacci sequence: the first line has one letter while the last line, representing the 11th number in the sequence, contains 89 letters. In addition, the letters of each word add up to a Fibonacci number.

You may need to use the scroll bar below the poem in order to view the last line in its entirety.

‘Pathways’ was first published in the online journal Independent Variable on August 1, 2018.