Zigzag.
It appeared nearly two centuries ago as a noun–distinct from a mere “walk” and more akin to a ramble–in Jonathan Swift’s “My Lady’s Lamentation”:
How proudly he talks
Of zigzags and walks
It’s a decent Scrabble word.
Mathematically, it is a literary oxymoron: a seamless “broken” line.
It can be found in architectural details, in the steep angles of a child’s dress-up crown, bridges’ aggressively slanted steel beams, the gentle meandering slope of a waterway breaking through a marsh.
It’s even a moth.
It’s also a compact, if grossly understated, metaphor both for death and for the walking who have been wounded by it.
You went zig and I went zag . . . .
I watch butterflies’ and moths’ zigzag zooming around the kind of bushes Jim once planted to draw them to our home.
Invisible and fleeting paths, Balm in Gilead:
“…his voice is a rainstorm
that rinses air to reveal earth’s surprises.
Today, the summer gone, four monarch butterflies,
their breed’s survivors, sucked a flower’s last blooms,
opened their wings, orange-and-black stained glass,
and printed on the sky in zigzag lines,
watch bright things rise: winter moons, the white undersides
of a California condor, once thought doomed,
now flapping wide like the first bird from ashes.”
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Author: Stephanie
In her spare time, Stephanie works full-time, and then some, as an attorney. She has published articles and delivered talks in arcane fields like forensic evidentiary issues, jury instructions, and expert scientific witness preparation. She attended law school near the the banks of the Charles River and loves that dirty water; she will always think of Boston as her home.
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Love in the Spaces 
A great selection of images for the zig zag challenge.
Thank you, Daniel. It was a lot of fun to collect them.
Beautiful images and so much zigzag!
🙂
I was astonished at how much zig-zagging is going on every day out there!
Every day in our life is zig-zagging.
It’s a great word: zig-zagging.
When there’s trouble in the office, now I can say: we were zig-zagging each other today!
😉
These are beautiful photos. Wonderful take on, Stephanie.
Thanks, Amy. I am especially fond of the photo challenges which launch us on such circuitous paths 🙂
Wonderful emotional zigzags…..and your photos take us on a wide ranging journey 🙂
Emotional zigzags: I think that captures my life pretty well…..
Oh, well done! I enjoyed every aspect of these, from the etymology through the poetry to the photos.
Thanks, T2T! Some of these are a lot of fun to collect and write.