NATURE’S POETRY | GAIA
Fibonacci Wonder Poetry
A Fibonacci Poem, inspired by nature’s numbers, the golden ratio, and the writings of Amy Marley and Tej.
The challenge was gnawing at my brain. Fibonacci. The spiral. The Golden Ratio and poetry. I just had to play together with Amy and Tej. But how?
And then a multi-layered story emerged.
This is the first part, the poem.
We are lovers of nut trees. Hazelnut, birch, and spring pollen trees are yummy food. A feast after winter fasting and hibernating. You, silly humans, think that we only love flowers. Think again. We, bees love buzz…
As a non-native speaker, I sometimes have trouble finding the right number of syllables. So I used a syllable counter to help me get the structure right. For this Fibonacci poem, the syllables need to be 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and then I went backward…
Poetry Inspiration
The background of the poem starts with Amy Marley introducing me to Fibonacci as an inspiration for poetry. Well, there she had me intrigued. I know Fibonacci but combining it with poetry was new to me.
Amy mentioned Tej who did a great job on the spiral up and down. You’re an inspiration to me, Tej!
Local Biodiversity
But then there are more layers to be discovered in this story.
On the surface, this story seems to have a simple topic. Bees who love to feed on trees. It’s true. They need trees as much as flowers because it gives them a diet of pollen when the flowers with nectar are not yet available.
So please make sure that there are pollen and nectar to be found for them during a long period of time in a circle of roughly 2 miles or 3 km. That’s the common flight range of bees.
Hmm… so far the need for local biodiversity and bees.
Fibonacci Spiral
But another layer, of course, is Fibonacci.
His numbers are famous for the mathematical question: “How many pairs of rabbits will be born in a year, starting from a single pair, if each month each pair gives birth to a new pair which becomes reproductive from the second month?”
The solution to this problem is the famous “Fibonacci sequence”: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89… a sequence of numbers in which each member is the sum of the previous two.
Golden Ratio
And then there’s the third layer, the golden ratio, well known in paintings and photography. The golden ratio is approximately 1.618 and is often called the Greek letter φ (phi). The golden ratio has its link to the Fibonacci spiral too. Hmm… who said everything is connected?
Here’s a list of works designed in line with the golden ratio, although the expert opinions are still divided. Buildings like the Pyramids, Stonehenge, and Borobudur are among them.
The golden ratio is what makes nature so beautiful to our human eyes.
And natural beauty should be celebrated! Highly! Widely!
Even the Mona Lisa seems to be painted according to the Fibonacci spiral. And that should be no surprise. Leonardo da Vinci was super inspired by nature. And his science is definitely something to look at for our future inventions!
Mathematics and Nature
Do you perhaps wonder now what mathematics has to do with nature?
“The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.”
— Galileo Galilei, astronomer, physicist and engineer
Have a look at the pictures below.
We think the world looks like the picture on the left. Whereas in reality, the picture on the right is correct. Everything in nature is connected by a mathematic formula.
These are the laws of nature. (Quantum) physics, biology, and chemistry make up our world. And wow, it’s interesting stuff and so important to design our future. but let’s stop seeing them as separate subjects and look for once at all the beautiful connections!
And for those writers who think they are just word-persons. Please, still have a look. There’s more to discover than you think. About beauty. About rhythm. About all Gaia has to offer us, humans… and that’ll create words again…
Thank you, Dennett, for accepting me as a new writer for Weeds and Wildflowers. I already loved reading the stories in this pub, but now I also hope to share many more stories with you all.
I’ll tag a few people who I think might be interested in my poetry inspired by deep ecology. Elisabeth Bob Dr John Agnes Eli Kayli Chowa Tree Karen.
If you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or my website. Or somewhere studying the details of nature with pen and notebook nearby…
Further reading
For lovers of fractals and other yummy nature details
For readers curious about me
