Fractals by Carolyn Elkins
On the first cold night of the year
all the cold nights of all the years
return, rising through the thin
bare branches of the trees
spread against the cold violet sky
like black fractal lace.
It is then that you know
there is no time.
Or that it twists like a wormy spiral
into and out of your life,
piercing your dreams at irregular
intervals. Time is not
a straight line, whatever it is.
It wells up in you; it spreads your life
out like a fan. You feel it in the way
your gaze moves up, half unwillingly,
to trace in the branching lines
of naked winter tress and pattern
of your own arteries and veins.
Perhaps Thoreau was right: Life
assumes the same form,
infinite permutations of one
extending shape: the same lobed star
in a leaf, a flower, your hand.
from Coriolis Forces, Palanquin Press (2000, 2005)
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