the geometry beneath

to be right with the world

the box can be who we are,

with right angles as human 

as a room, as a book,

as in the way we build,

as in the way we see,

as in the way we think:

look around the house and see the rectangles

within which we live our stories,

I have long felt we pull ourselves 

out of the world with those right angles,

for much of what we see in nature

feels more free form than tightly-disciplined,

I have feared that we can cage 

and thus domesticate ourselves,

now, though, I wonder,

for the natural world has such lines, too,

every growing shoot, every tree, 

is at right angle to the level earth,

all that falls obeys gravity’s demand 

to go straight down at right angle to the level earth,

even when aerodynamics confuses the issue,

even more, the cardinal points at the heart 

are 90 degrees from each other,

the 360 degree circle quartered into North, East, South, West,

we live our lives in the concrete of the moment,

and how wonderful those moments can be!

how even more wonderful 

when the geometry of existence reveals itself to us,

and we start to realize the blueprints beneath it all.

by Henry H. Walker

January 17, ‘16