It is summer! Summer!
The woodpecker sounds the alarm
in the backyard. With a hammer
hammers on the hard tree bark.
Come to see the sun
shining through the leaves!
Come to smell the perfumed air,
and to gulp delight!
It is truly summer! Yammer cockatoos
wearing Queen Anne’s lace.
It is really summer! Rings the phone
bird’s call as it clings in place,
thrilling up the trunk.
It is cheaper here!
Cheaper here by much!
Cheers the chirper in the cherry tree.
Chokecherries for free!
We can later come to your barbeque,
eat and drink on cue
trilling as we do.
Beery beery beer! Beery beery beer!
Note: The poem is structured by the golden ratio in multiple ways. Both line and syllable counts of the two stanzas of the poem are consecutive Fibonacci numbers: The first stanza has 13 lines and 89 syllables, the second stanza has 8 lines and 55 syllables. Therefore, the ratio of lines, 13/8 = 1.625, and the ratio of syllables, 89/55 = 1.61818, are both approximations of the golden ratio. Geometrically, the point where the vertical line segment which starts at the top of the poem’s text and ends at its bottom is cut into the golden ratio, fall in the break between the two stanzas. If, in addition, the poem is typeset in Times New Roman 11 pt font single spaced, it can be inscribed in a golden rectangle.
This poem first appeared in Proceedings of Bridges Richmond (2024).
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Sarah Glaz’s poetry collection, Ode to Numbers (Antrim House, 2017), was a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist. Her poems appeared in The Hudson Review, The Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Talking Writing and other venues. Sarah is Emerita Professor of Mathematics at the University of Connecticut, and serves as associate editor for the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, and as poetry coordinator for Bridges. For more information see Sarah’s website: http://www.math.uconn.edu/~glaz
