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
***
Richmond Road 