(2019)
In the trees there is a dark corner inside the corner a tower at the top a garden in the garden a basket and a trouble we brake on the crest of a hill get out and walk the streets eat at a diner called The Golden Branch drink sea water sleep in a meadow unsaved and undone
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In geometry a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is φ, the golden ratio. That is, a golden spiral gets wider by a factor of φ for every quarter turn it makes. (wikipedia)
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Wider meaning a bigger embrace wider meaning a sidewalk a walk toward the sea holding the desert in one hand a shield in the other then a mirror a quarter turn to see the next vista off just an inch and the universe throws in a spoon for a quarter of bacon while in parallel and unseen the sweet pig is whole and very happy a talking sage taking turns at the piano a throne of gulls multiplying by the dozens I follow raisins and crumbs uneaten by the muskrat who swims across the pond into the island’s grace
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Golden spirals are not the only spirals (see spiral list). They are often found where other spirals have yet to appear. When traveling, it is not unheard of to find one on a slope, a stone, or a sea.
In the case of a sea, it is possible to swim right into the rectangle at the center of a golden spiral. Caution is advised, of course, lifejackets provided for unpredictability.
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Sitting in the belly of the canoe Olive and I both wore life jackets she wanted the front but her parents insisted the front was for me why did it seem like we were competing as we spiraled across the pond? my goddaughter five years old and me sixty years her senior the markings were not clear nor the beginnings that day of her birth five years before when I watched the Canada Day fireworks on a porch overlooking the wharf at Hatfield Point I had just come from a boathouse in Maine where Sonny and I met for the second time where after sex we walked to a shy dog in the graveyard and the boathouses in Belfast
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In the case of a stone, where histories keep themselves stored and safe from weather, it may be possible to play back the spiral of a certain day—any day, really, any memory, fragile or not.
Even if the stone has been crushed.
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You will see it all if you just stop to stare into the dust the boathouses the kisses the little cocks the drownings the vaginal walls the eyes smiling at you or glaring back in rage or in pain a house in Cleveland or a house on the side of a mountain in Peru my dog Jack I hear his low bark watch the fur stand up on the back of his neck a blackbird calls out from the swamp a flash of red from its wing the canoe pulls up in the mud along the bank we get out and walk to an abandoned house surrounded by lilacs your hair so dark in the wind the wind itself a panorama
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All my life I have grown without changing shape. In this way, I exhibit logarithmic growth at a variety of angles both distinctly different from and equal to that of the golden spiral.
See: Pear, Hourglass, Inverted Triangle.
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The renewal of blood in the pear hourglass sands what’s left in the triangle when the sides fall away I see you there pulsing holding a child then another child then another you suck them back into your body past the borders the searchlights at dusk the jeep tracks in the sand the concrete painted green with cheery dogs the tiny drones that see beneath the mesquites but not beneath your skin
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Seeds in a sunflower are arranged in a tightly-packed pattern with two interlocking spirals, one moving clockwise and one counterclockwise.
Perhaps we all move counterclockwise now, unfathomed shapes or interlocking spirals, and there will be no one awake at the opening, no one guarding love.
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Once the spiral starts it cannot be stopped the opening sealed for a reason it’s time to walk forward into the dark no turning back remember: the entrance only opens for those of us willing to travel without knowledge of a future where it’s safe for children to burst through the skin of the world really there’s no choice for us the physics is all wrong the going takes a certain faith don’t you think?