This week’s Poetic Exploration challenge

This is week five of the Poetic Exploration challenge on writing.com. Tetractys, created by Ray Stebbing, is the form I am exploring. Euclid, a mathematician, thought the numeric series 1, 2, 3, 4, which sums up to ten, has mystical significance. Mr. Stebbing based Tetractys on this series of numbers. A Tetractys poem has five lines with syllable counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10.

This form has four versions. A single has five lines with syllable counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10. A double has ten lines with syllable counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1. A triple has fifteen lines with syllable counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 10. A quadruplet has twenty lines with a syllable count of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1.