A Tetrahedron leads to a Poem

     Minnesota teacher and writer Ben Orlin has done lots and lots to make mathematical ideas popular and accessible.   One of his prominent activities is his website Math with Bad Drawings.  In this posting from 2018, Poem on a Pyramid, Orlin uses the special pyramid called a tetrahedron to structure a poem.  Each of the edges of the tetrahedron is associated with a line of verse and each triangular face is thereby associated with a three-line stanza.  The poem below was constructed by associating a line with each of the six edges -- with a stanza for each of the four triangular faces.

A tetrahedron -- for designing a poem

Below, I offer Orlin's poem; for more details about its construction, visit and explore Orlin's wonderfully informative and stimulating website.

Braided lines form a PANTOUM

The pantoum is derived from a Malaysian form of interlocking four-line stanzas in which lines 2 and 4 of one stanza are used as lines 1 and 3 of the next. The lines may be of any length, and the poem can go on for an indefinite number of stanzas; it may be completed with a final stanza that uses lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza as lines 4 and 2 of the last, closing the circle of the poem.  As with recursion, each stanza provides an impetus for the next.