Saturday, July 20, 2013

Septenary Sinews



image borrowed from bing


Septenary Sinews

“We shall never understand one another until we
reduce the language to just seven words.”
--Kahil Gibran

We have always looked to the number 7 for luck,
odd not even, and we have continuously
been immersed in septenary myth & reality
since Day One, for it took God 7 days
to create the world, didn’t it--and we spend
all lot of our time trying to avoid a relationship
with the 7 Deadly Sins.

Shakespeare’s seventh play was Edward III,
“All the world’s a stage
and all men and women are but players;
they have their exits and entrances;
and one man, in his time, plays many parts;
his acts being seven ages.”
--As You Like It.

In ancient times there were Seven Wonders of the World:
the Colossus of Rhodes & Great Pyramid at Giza,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
the Lighthouse of Alexandria,
the Statue of Zeus in Olympia,
the Temple of Artemus at Ephesus,
the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

7 is the fourth prime number,
actually a double Mersenne prime.
A 7-sided shape is called a hepagon.
There are 7 fundamental types of catastrophes.
7 was considered a God number in ancient Egypt,
and the Pharaohs ordered things in groups of seven.
It was Seven Against Thebes.

There are 7 books in the Harry Potter series.
Harry was born in July, the seventh month.
Wizarding students spent 7 years at Hogwarts.
Lord Voldemort created 7 Horcruxes. 
I read each volume in 7 days.
T.E. Lawrence wrote the 7 Pillars of Wisdom.
George Carlin created The 7 Words You Can Never Say.

The original 45 rpm records were 7 inches in diameter.
Pirates sailed the Seven Seas.
There are seven main Archangels.
President Taft coined the phrase “seventh inning stretch”.
Mickey Mantle wore number 7 on his uniform. 
Buddha walked 7 steps at his birth.
Atlantis, according to myth, was made up of 7 islands. 

There are seven main stars in the Big Dipper.
Most mammals have seven cervical vertebrae.
In British folklore, the Queen of the Fairies,
( Quentin Crisp perhaps), paid a tithe to Hell.
Isaac Newton identified 7 colors in the rainbow.
Diamonds are Forever is the 7th film in the James Bond series.
Daniel Craig is the seventh actor to portray Bond. 

In the past Hindus wrote a 7 in one stroke, as a curve.
Ghubar Arabs made the longer lower line a diagonal.
Europeans added a third line in the middle
to differentiate it from the #1 in handwriting. 
Canada has eleven highways and route 7’s.
Many countries, many in the Middle East, have only one.
America has fifty-three of them. 

Hollywood has long considered the number 7
to be lucky when included in a film title. 
Seven Chances (1925)
Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Seven Sinners (1940)
7 Brides for 7 Brothers (1954)
Seven Samurai (1954)

The Seven Year Itch (1955)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao ( 1964)
7 Days in May (1964)
Se7en (1995)
7 Years in Tibet (1997).

It should take a reader between 7 seconds
and 7 minutes to read this poem, and
about 7 days to forget it. I’m 7 times
grateful that 7 of you managed it. 


Glenn Buttkus

July 2013

Posted over at dVerse Poets "Poetics"

Would you like to hear the author read this lucky poem to you?










14 comments:

brudberg said...

Ha, that took indeed more than 7 seconds to read, but then we have to remember that in China (which is slightly larger) 8 is luckier than 7.

Great many examples here Glenn

Brian Miller said...

you know i am totally going to laugh if you get seven comments...wow...tour def force #7....again interesting all the connections...probably the most common lucky number as well...in under 7 minutes...but far more fascinated than 7 seconds...

Mary said...

This was very interesting reading. I don't think it took me seven minutes to read, but probably I spent 7 minutes because I decided to read it twice. I wish I had been the seventh commenter though, as that would have made me lucky!

Anonymous said...

Wow... that is really interested. you played really well with the numbers. I loved it. :-)

Anonymous said...

edit:- Wow... that is really interesting. you played well with the numbers. I loved it. :-)It was an enjoyable read.

Laurie Kolp said...

I love that quote from Shakespeare, Glenn.

(7 words)

sharonlee said...

A clever potent write... thought provoking. Makes me think of that movie, hmmm was it?

Sharonlee

Anonymous said...

Wow this is very clever, thoroughly enjoyed this journey of 7's... very interesting indeed.

Mystic_Mom said...

Wow...that is a lot of sevens going on my friend. Great write!

Claudia said...

haha...7 surely is an important number

Claudia said...

that were seven words in my comment

Claudia said...

smiles

kelvin s.m. said...

...too many 7s here to count... factual write... smiles...

Anonymous said...

Seven symbols dominate Dante's inferno: seven circles, seven walls, seven waters, seven liberal arts, seven sciences, seven virtues