Self Similarity

by Alice Bolstridge

Veins map surfaces.  In mayflower
petals and leaves, they form boundaries
of smaller and smaller patterns.  Things
branch — stems, trees, families, water systems,
blood and nerve paths.  Weather maps show
the air itself swirling, heat rising to form
storms in the image of galactic spirals.

As large and as small as my eye can see,
design governs, but hard as I look
I cannot see the designer.  Some place
in Tennessee, trees grow on top of huge boulders.
Roots curl down around the rock
to find a hold in earth.  Unseeing, designer
and designed resist and hold each other.