Canto 27:
This Fabric Canvassing
the Wind

A poem by
R. Virgil Ellis

                          This fabric canvassing the wind
                                becomes the Mandelbrot Room:

Everyone walks slowly             into a brilliant room.
From a distance you see             colors flashing, orange,
grapefruit, lime, opening into   another equally strange which
is yet the       same room. These crystal rooms grow       smaller
as you       look toward the swirl the dark horizon       but as
you walk toward                     them wondering
which one                               to enter
you see                                 each is
the same so                              it doesn't
matter which                             you choose.
The farther you                       walk the more
you notice the                         sinuous chambers
curving. People you                 know stroll slowly,
patiently, their faces               watchful, like you
considering, strangely       attracted, or hesitant,
bemused, thinking how each comes from a dark
shuttered room, friends and enemies alike,
preoccupied, struck by the smell of ripe fruit.
Each person sits in       what for each seems
to be the center of             the room that seems
just large enough. As you             sit in the center you close
your eyes, just as they do.               You see the curving facets
that grow into fresh designs         each revealing another, as if
each were a new, cool touch     or pulse of blood more calm
or each a face on the diamond of this concentration
and you can sense each
will soon break
the lure of iteration,
will be free to go, at home
in this room where
colors flash, fig,
apple, pear,

                                                plum.

Canto 27, first published as "The Mandelbrot Room," Calapooya Collage
(Tom Ferte, Editor, Adrienne Lee Press, P.O. Box 309, Monmouth, OR 97361), No. 15, August, 1991, p. 7.

Copyright 2006 by R. Virgil Ellis