1/1/2/3/5/8. These are the syllable counts for a six line poem called a Fib, named after the first six numbers of the Fibonacci sequence. And I am writing one of these for today’s poem, a prompt courtesy of the Napowrimo website. Correction: I am writing two of those, one forwards, then one backwards, to make one slightly longer mirrored Fib. This visual has nothing to do with the poem, but is an example, one of billions, of the Fibonacci sequence, or the Golden Ratio, at work in the natural world.
Poem on April 7
My
son
purchased
a phone app
that measures and scores
the quality and quantity
of his night-time sleeping patterns.
It even records
sounds he makes
like speech,
sleep
talk.
And I find that I have much more to say about this subject but not enough stomach to write another poem. He’s pretty excited about his sleep app. For two school days in a row, he has been able to wake himself, without any prodding from the parental units, and get himself out of bed in plenty of time for school. This is nothing short of miraculous. The app, he believes, is working some serious magic on his experience with sleep, qualitatively and quantitatively. And this morning, he plays me a recording the app made in the middle of the night, an incident, apparently, of sleep talking. We are amused. Clearly his voice. Clearly he is speaking. The words, however, are incomprehensible, not because he wasn’t articulating, but because whatever he was articulating could not be considered “words,” at least not in English, and they weren’t Spanish either. So this wondrous new phone app is capturing our son immersed in his own dream language. Speaking in tongues. That’s all. Technology. For me, the jury is out on whether this application, in the long run, will benefit the boy, or whether he’s just been taken on a $30 ride. I will let you know next April when his subscription automatically renews.
michael jarmer 