Phi, by Jennifer Burg

What are these haunting messages,
Coded in cryptic languages,
Through sights and sounds and senses
Speaking to us without words?

And how do we decipher
The beauty as it strikes us,
By saying it or counting it
Make it finally our own?

Who hears the golden music best,
Who sees with clearest vision?
And can they tell me what they see
And write down every note?

A child has eyes still bright and true,
An ear open to voices.
A child hears shouts of tiny "Whos"
On dust specks in the air.

A child knows worlds hold worlds inside,
Each world leads to another,
And angels dance on heads of pins
When you reach infinity.

But children don't have words for this
And insufficient numbers,
And as we age we want to say
Or count what we have known.

The ancients mathematicians sought
A language most eternal
And found in pure proportions
A number timeless and divine.

The golden ratio they called it,
And Phi in Greek we named it.
And everywhere we find its mark
In nature and in art.

I see a message etched
In a ragged rocky coastline
And the pattern is repeated
In the ripples at my feet.

A fern unfurls its growing leaves
Like nature's own fresh fractal,
So I paint a fractal of my own
To find the world inside.

I try to read a message
In the face of a sunflower
But I'm blinded by the spirals
Spinning left, and spinning right.

The spirals leave my dazzled grasp.
A galaxy is born
And sends to me through heaven's time
A metaphor of stars.

A message whispers softly
In the angles of a seashell
And calls my soul to trace a curve
Down paths that never end.

I am told that these mute messages
All have Phi locked within them.
What is this magic number?
And what secrets does it hold?

We cannot write the number,
So irrational by nature.
Never ending, always changing
As it steps toward the sublime.

What would happen if we could
Know the endless perfection?
Say in words and in numbers
What we don't yet understand?