Blond sand blows low and hard over ankles, driftwood and half-buried trash. These feathers, eddies and vortices have been perfectly modelled in our wind tunnels and supercomputers. Simpler now, elevation, the heft in an old rubber ball, angle of release, initial velocity, all describe that perfect parabola, a quadratic which the dog knows as well as Galileo.
Some cyclone out in the Pacific spun up in predictable ways across a thousand square miles of warm ocean drives long-period waves up over the continental shelf to create turquoise cylinders that hang for a moment and longer as the off-shore blows extravagant combs high into the air. A lone surfer considers Plato’s conic sections, hydrodynamics and chaotic flow as he imagines a green roaring way closing over. A calculus of gulls stays to the last, then wings as one onto the wind contemptuous of the collie’s low-shouldered guile.
All this and much more entirely calculable until the early sun, travelling the ocean in columns of glory – opens for a moment and asks my soul
Sleepless, I listen to the first fall of leaves
on my summer garden.
Image: The Flammarion woodcut c/- Wikimedia. A haibun written for Dverse where Bjorn is hosting and asks us to think about ‘grey’.
Peter Frankis writes 
I like how it is all calculable until the Sun in his glory asks something, but it doesn’t matter what. The transcendence over the calculable has been achieved.
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Excellent. And thank God there is a world that exists that cannot be calculated, or even postulated.
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Oh yeah. 🙂
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The sleepless night while listening to the leaves in the garden describes the meanderings of the mind during such hours perfectly!
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Thank you. Glad you liked it.
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What a brilliant juxtaposition of the perceived mathematical precision of life, and the utterly inexplicable nature of beauty.
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The first stanza had me in rapture. I read it over and over. And again. I felt every word, convinced I’d experienced the same thing numerous times. I was cast adrift in the second stanza, but no worries; I’m often clueless. Often adrift. I think poets are expected to do that adrifting stuff. ps: My tulips are about to bloom. Spring is coming, which means your autumn is nipping at your toes soon. How easily the table turns…
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I love how you weave in the mathematical and the magical in equal measure.
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I really love this… and I also know that there are always surprises to come… we cannot predict weather for very long… and yet we know the equations.
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Exactly 🙂
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The magic of math… and persistent wonder of creation. Incalculable. Cool.
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Love the feel of this piece, Peter: its hints of perfection hidden in reality, the collie and the sound of leaves, and more. Nicely done.
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I suppose there must be some math behind all of the miracles……oh my bubble has been burst!
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