Credo, by Christine Stewart-Nuñez

Guggenheim Bilbao Spain (Architect, Frank Gehry), photography by Jack Torcello 2007 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Credo
 
                  Fractal: a cascade of never-ending, self-similar, repeated 
                  elements that change in scale but retain similar shape.
 
A
cascade
of
infinite
is why 
I believe in
loops
and spirals,
subtle shifts, cycles.
My son,
preschooler stunned 
by
the science museum, 
sticks his hand 
into a glacier,
the chunk 
a broken testimony,
the history
of
a world dissolving. Cold! 
It’s cold! And 
it’s melting. Look right here, he says.
Similarities
of self
astonish. I see them in
architecture,
geometry a welcome language,
shapes
a new alphabet for 
prayer and song.
I study Peter Eisenman’s 
House 11a 
lapping up patterns, interlocking Ls,   
squares and 
replicated rectangles--
the syntax of 
ideas. For Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim 
in
Bilbao, syntax looks like 
titanium scales rhyming across curves. Glass
and limestone 
patterns, similarities of
visual texture, 
are creations of weight, depth; order breaks
tension
where the lines turn. A cascade 
of repeating elements grounds my belief in 
humanity
as mystery. Signs appear: a sound, 
song,
and syllable mean things. 
Armadillo! Armadillo! sings my son, 
the youngest, 
using his Louis Armstrong 
voice; grit gives way to twang and twang turns into hard-rock screams. 
He’s an oracle 
at four years old, an armor-clad mammal  
his muse. 
My oldest son speaks in code, 
echolalia a symptom of a seizure-
besieged brain. When 
he utters, No and No and No and
No, 
then I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know, I listen for 
a divine voice revealed. 
Cascades changing in scale, not shape, is why I 
trust weight, depth, 
height—materials and thingness: 
Saturn’s rings, the Pacific coastline, bolts of lightning,
a Romanesco 
cauliflower, angelica flower-
heads, veins
of sycamore leaves, seashells, snowflakes, blood vessels, DNA. 
A range and scope of fractals 
inspire awe, a cascade of never-ending 
wonder at both 
connections and aberrations as
well
as places of perfect order and broken patterns. When  
I consider what we  
may be reduced-sized copies of, I grapple
with insight;
it hovers in physics and biology, the shapes of letters, 
the magic of new languages, 
the mystery of cells and synapses, the music 
of my sons’ voices,                                               
the geometries of buildings and trees. 
Sometimes
I glimpse an answer, something like seeing starlight years after 
the star dies, supernovas. 
Four hours before my youngest son’s birth, I dreamed 
my sister, dead 
31 years, placed him in my arms: Take care of him, she said. He has
her eyes, ice-blue and illumined by 
God.
 
Christine Stewart-Nuñez

This poem first appeared in the author's book, The Poet & The Architect, Terrapin Press, 2021.
 
Christine Stewart-Nuñez is South Dakota’s poet laureate, is the author and editor of several books of poetry, including The Poet & The Architect (Terrapin Books 2021), South Dakota in Poems: An Anthology (2020), Untrussed (University of New Mexico Press 2016) and Bluewords Greening (Terrapin Books 2016), winner of the 2018 Whirling Prize. Christine’s teaching, creative work, and service has earned accolades from South Dakota State University, including the Dr. April Brooks Woman of Distinction Award (2020) and the Outstanding Experiential Learning Educator Award (2019). She’s the founder of the Women Poets Collective, a regional group focused on advancing their writing through peer critique and support.

Credo, Triptych, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2022