Fib(onacci)

Last year, my daughter was learning about the Fibonacci sequence. This is a sequence of numbers in which each succeeding number is the sum of the previous two numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. Mathematically, this can be used to describe a spiral:

Ideas for poems come to me in all kinds of ways. After my daughter taught me about the Fibonacci sequence, I started wondering if I could write a poem based on it. The result was Fib. The numbers of syllables in each line follow the Fibonacci sequence, and the poem plays on the word fib as well.

It was fun trying to fit into the form provided by the Fibonacci sequence. For a literary-minded guy, this was also one of the few times I had fun with math! Fib will appear in my second book, Event Horizon, which I will self-publish in the next few months.

Fib

A
fib,
it’s said,
grows once told:
lie added to lie
in sequence, the whole thing spirals
out of control, a twister with wreckage in its wake.