Figures of Eight By Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Figures of Eight 
 
For viewers from directly overhead,
 
In shapes of eight a dot appears to move,
 
Gyrating to the left, then right instead,
 
Until once more that dot's retraced its groove.
 
Restricted to this view, one may believe
 
Each circuit leads the dot to nowhere new,
 
So readily one's point of view deceives—
 
One fails to see what others know is true! ...
 
For shifting one's perspective to the side
 
Exposes how the dot can soar and soar:
 
If eights are perpendicularly spied,
 
Gyres make a dot redo what's done before.
 
However, from the side, that dot takes flight
 
To spiral up to ever higher height!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. He still builds mathematical models of animal behavior.  But not teaching means time for writing, especially acrostic sonnets, one of which won the Adult Category of the Southern Shakespeare Company’s 2020 Sonnet Contest. Other acrostic sonnets have appeared in Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist and other journals. He also writes limericks, several of which have appeared in Britain’s Daily Mail.