Every situation has more than one side to the story. Maybe two, maybe ten. But humans crave simplicity. We don’t like to live with the stress of ambiguity. We want fewer facets to consider, not more. We want our problems and our successes to be nicely categorized, packaged, and stored away.
Perhaps this is why I sometimes envy the bee’s faceted eyes. So many lenses, fitted perfectly together, each with a slightly different view of the world. Does the bee integrate that set of perspectives into one multi-dimensional whole, or does the bee hold the images in mind simultaneously. Like a security guard with a thousand cameras who is nonetheless able to monitor the cameras all simultaneously?
New Normal or just a New Facet?
This is a poem I wrote early in the coronavirus pandemic, when it seemed that new twists came daily, even hourly. The New Normal was obsolete the moment it could be described. Every facet of the situation spawned a new consideration, previously not even on the list of issues to deal with.
This is also a Fibonacci poem.
The Fibonacci form is one where the number of syllables in each line increases following the Fibonacci Sequence, which is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. In this poem, once it reaches the line of 13 syllables, the lines follow the sequence back down in decreasing order as well.
Now I Wish I Had Compound Vision
Bee.
Just
the one
hardworking
lonely bumbler drones
about, integrates pixel &
sky, pine, azalea. Nectar, pollen, furred forelegs.
Scanned, filed, recalled with inborn ease.
My own facets? Just
broken. Shard
eats shard.
Eats
shard.
Perfect vision isn’t real
And trying to consider each facet of a situation isn’t completely possible. But the more important the situation, the more critical to our health or well-being, or that of others, the more we probably ought to take a second, or third, or even fourth look.
Missed a poem? Links to prior poems can be found on this page.
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.