weather poem 5

Edgar Allan Poe
speaking of the butterfly
effect said Merely moving our hands
would affect the atmosphere all the way around the planet.

whether or not we choose to save our hands
move our hands (wash our hands?) may
or may not affect the whole world.
choice -  another seed chaos
nurtures, another reason
the future is always chaotic.

like when you blow up your own
house
because there is whisper
of treasure buried
beneath.

in the rubble. your treasure.
no one else’s. everyone sees the mess, the rubble.
and you are also covered in dust.
flecks of demolished gemstones
glint from underground.

explore origin as the inevitable, unreachable destination.
attractors are stable.

small uncertainty will grow exponentially fast
in a chaotic system. exponential growth
surpasses any linear growth. 

the end may not be at the beginning. it doesn’t follow,
the middle is somewhere. the initial states do determine what happens.
it does follow, secretly. it is the scale, the growth,
the surprise curve that is surprising. 

the larger it gets the faster it grows.
getting closer and closer but never quite arriving.
often, as uncertainty grows too large, it starts to fold back in on itself.
we start to know again.

eventually. after the rubble.
flecks of demolished gemstones
glint from underground.