Laura Grace Weldon
Unseen Patterns
I should know more about graceful poetic
forms— ghazals, sestinas, mathnawis,
villanelles, sonnets, tankas, quatrains.
I’d rather swim close to secrets
held in coral reefs where a five-inch fish
creates meaning within patterns.
Before mating, the male Japanese pufferfish
swims in circles, tiny fins scraping sand
into symmetrical ridges.
He enhances the design with shell fragments,
with fine sediment. It takes him nine days
to create an ornate sand mandala.
If pleased, a female pufferfish
lays eggs in the pattern’s center.
Underwater currents slowly erase
his design as tiny pufferfish emerge
into a watery existence where beauty and danger
are written in and out of form each moment.
Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books.