Ancient Ammonite, Antecedent to The Chambered Nautilus
(Accompanying a gift of a fossil to my therapist,
the woman who breathed life back into my locked spaces.)
Infant nautilus grows its shell
Safely secreted within the smallest chamber
Predators everywhere seeking to devour
The innocent mollusk just increasing in size
Without understanding.
Suddenly it seems too tight
We need more space
We must expand
Moving to the front of the shell
Sealing off the newly vacated space
Leaving the abandoned chamber
To safely enfold the hurts and fears
Undiscovered, buried, petrified.
I build my next space
Working hard then, making new rooms
Perfecting colors from above and below
The camouflage of life in the deep.
Now grown larger in the abyss
So safe in my Fibonaccian* shell
I can poke out my head and explore
Eat and grow, find my place in my world
But buried inside, almost forgotten
Is what's locked in the primal chamber.
Escaping predacious assaults
I pull myself in and hide behind my hood
And using the old locked chambers to my advantage
Keeping me in a state of neutral buoyancy
While I move this way and that
I can continue to enlarge my shell
Lock off more old chambers
And feel as though I am content.
©
Suz
3/19/99
*Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13…) -
very close to phi, the mathematical ratio for
a growing spiral.
