I wandered through the vaults of thought and flame,
Where peristyles in basalt bore no name,
And columns stretched like hymns across the seas,
Painted in twilight’s thousand reverent degrees.
The sky, it kissed the ocean’s mirrored gaze
A temple drowned in ever-shifting haze.
And there I lived in lush, immortal ease,
Where fans of palm blew slow, obedient breeze.
Their silence served to cool my burning brow,
As naked slaves moved time without a vow.
Yet in that land of dream and dusky gold,
A deeper, stranger symmetry took hold:
Why is it all I see returns in three
Like some divine and ancient guarantee?
The Father, Son, and Spirit veil the soul,
The Id, the Ego, Superego’s role.
The Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu guard the gate,
While Maiden, Mother, Crone unravel fate.
Three Fates who spin, three Graces clothed in charm,
Three curses, three desires, threefold harm.
The world itself obeys a triple voice:
Solid, Liquid, Gas in fluid choice.
Evaporation, Condensation’s dance,
And Precipitation’s downward trance.
The atom sings in Proton, Neutron, Charge,
Its silence split across a spectrum large.
Red, Green, and Blue compose the prism’s song,
Three notes of light that carry life along.
The Past, the Present, Future never sleep
They guard the hours we borrow but can't keep.
Producer, Consumer, Decomposer rise,
And write the food chain’s truth beneath the skies.
Our minds are threes: Conscious where we tread,
Subconscious murmurs, Unconscious sleeps like dead.
A triune brain of Reptile, Feeling, Mind,
A holy tangle evolution twined.
Our needs arise as Survive, Belong, Transcend,
The Maslow path we chase until the end.
And still we speak with Logic, Heart, and Trust
Logos, Pathos, Ethos born from dust.
A First name, Middle, Last we often bear,
To walk our Youth, Adult, and Elder stare.
Mind, Body, Spirit are the roles we keep,
We Work, we Play, and then we fall to Sleep.
The Hero, Guide, Antagonist all meet,
On stages where three Acts make life complete.
The Setup, Clash, Resolve in story’s shell,
A dance of Thesis, Anti, Synthesis fell.
The Trident stands with Power, Balance, Will,
And fairy tales grant Wishes by the thrill
Of threes: three trials, three locks, three golden keys
Three riddles echoing in whispered trees.
Why so much threeness clings to every breath?
Why three to shape a life, a fate, a death?
What secret lies in this repeated spell
This triad truth the world has learned so well?
I lay beneath those caverns carved in lore,
Drunk on the wine of metaphors and more.
Is this the code, the song, the god’s decree?
The structure of the soul? The cosmic plea?
Or is the third not curse, nor gift, but test
The balance point between the east and west?
Where chaos meets control in perfect bind,
The echo of a Universal Mind?
Three stars above me blinked in calm delight.
Three steps I took into the endless night.
Three questions burned like brands inside of me:
"What are you? Where from? What will you be?"
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Existence - The rule of three
It's strange if you think about how many things in life follow the rule of three ? 1. Bubble bubble 2. Toil 3. Trouble . It's in everything. The rule of 3 is this life silent truth.