Meg suggested that I wrote a poem on ‘the butterfly effect’. I’m not sure why. But, as you can see, I created a highly original title for the piece. I’m good like that.

Here’s the theory. I’m sure you are all familiar with it. A butterfly flaps it’s wings in China and a week later there’s a tidal wave in Samoa. Or something like that.

What I take this to mean is that everything, everyone, is connected. Someone smiles in Africa and someone cries in Tibet.

But there is something that made the butterfly flap it’s wings. A subtle change in the wind, perhaps. And what caused that change in the wind? Was it a heatwave in Indonesia? That heatwave may be the result of forest destruction in Brazil. And so on and so on and so on …..

So the wings of a solitary butterfly at one particular moment in time have an impact on all of us and on everything. Just as all of us and everything influence the flight of the butterfly. Everything happens for a reason. Or for no reason at all. Who can really tell the difference?

Not that my poem really has all that much to do with it.

***

You take a breath in Texas

I exhale in Japan

It’s unbreakable. A nexus

This game. This little plan

Everything directed

Every moment bought and sold

Everything connected

Everything has been foretold

You’re a captive in the prison

Whilst I am chained here to the mast

When there’s no hope, there’s no decision

Because the future is the past

Yet I can hear your thinking

Every thought entwined with mine

While our boat is surely sinking

We are doomed. But feeling fine

It’s a book already read

It’s a song already sung

All our words already said

Our race already run

It’s the butterfly effect

And that’s how it’s meant to be

We act. We don’t direct

But still you flap your wings for me

***