Cyranny was talking about snowflakes this morning and I’ve always had big questions about this idea of no two of them being the same. I mean …. has anybody actually checked? Until global warming has rendered all snowflakes as redundant the jury has to remain out on the issue, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, I’m stuck here in hospital (no sign of snow out the window) with little inspiration so wrote another silly poem about it.

***

No two snowflakes look the same

How can that be true?

If I can’t find my special snowflake

What am I to do?

The last one melted in my arms

Under a sky so blue

Now I’m searching every snowflake

Until I find one just like you

The day is almost done here, but still just awakening elsewhere – so I pass on my good will to all.

My own day didn’t go quite to plan when, at about 7 last night, my son rushed me to hospital.

The experience, as usual, has not been without its laughs.

Upon admitting me the nurse looked up at my son prior to jabbing a few needles in my bum and asking a few personal questions. He’s an ex professional sportsman and, with a massive frame (and beard) and a baseball cap looks a bit threatening. He doesn’t look a whole lot like me.

“Are you related to the patient?” she asked as she pulled down the back of my shorts.

“No,” he replied, dead-pan, “I’m just the Uber driver that brought him in.”

A little later in the evening, when things had gone down hill somewhat and I had changed colour dramatically and was writhing around on the bed mouthing obscenities, he took a photograph of me which he entitled ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Very Old Man’.

I elected not to include the photograph in this post.

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

***

Another spin-off from Cyranny . It’s not supposed to mean very much.

(Actually, walking in the snow in bare feet can be quite exhilarating, don’t you think?For about a minute?)

***

Walking in the snow

again

Been walking since I don’t know

when

No word from you

except bad news

Forgot myself

Forgot my shoes

I played my cards

You rolled these dice

Leaving me to freeze

Ain’t nice

Your love’s gone cold

so heaven knows

I’ve lukewarm thoughts

with frozen toes

But hoping. Hoping

now and then

That sunshine might

arise again

That snow will cease

that ice will thaw

That you will be

my love once more

***