God had done things in a kind of order:

the first day this, the second day that,

the seventh a day of rest.

But there was no rest for God,

the wicked, nor for anyone else.

What about the 14-year-old boy who overdosed in Langley, B.C., his death

captured on film

and posted on social media?

Where was the order in that, the sense?

Or the El Paso shooter claiming a loss

of racial purity due to intermarriage with Mexicans?

 

Leonardo de Pisa’s Fibonacci sequence

was not only infinite but indisputable:

0+1 always equalled 1; 1+1, 2; 1+2, 3; 2+3, 5 and so on

until the numbers were beyond reach.

But as I squeeze a quarter lemon into my glass of water, spray the oak table and watch the wood grain bleach,

I recognize there are infinite ways to disrupt order:

the table, forever altered,

my own Fibonacci sequence indisputably

out of whack.

 

There was no respite for the dead boy,

and the shooter really believed his own rhetoric,

while God’s seventh day went on interminably.

 

I take the piece of lemon,

grind it into the table, rub back and forth hard:

watch the oak lighten

and a new pattern emerge.

 

***

Carolyne Van Der Meer lives and writes in Montreal, Canada. She has two published books, Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014) and Journeywoman (Inanna, 2017). A collection of poetry called Sensorial is forthcoming from Inanna in 2021. Her poetry and prose have been published internationally.