The Golden Ratio 

by Ben Chappell

 

I think Fibonacci knew of you. 

 

Kepler, too, heard your name 

 

when they, and Pacioli and Binet,  

penned their laws and theorems. 

 

On the objective and empirical  

beauty present in nature, mathematics, 

and otherwise sacred geometry, 

 

I couldn’t say much.  

Math had been your best subject  

before we’d met, when our 

recurrence relation 

made a sum of us. 

 

But when I lay 

in your lap, facing sunward,  

and rays of golden undertones 

coil across my outstretched  

index, middle, ring, pinkie— 

I think I understand 

what the ancient Greeks meant 

by divine proportion. 

 
 

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