Friday, May 23, 2014

Birthday Series: Edward Lorenz

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist who tried to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts,wound up unleashing a scientific revolution called chaos theory
This is a poem from our collection Multiverse, and  mentions the butterfly effect:



Baker’s Transformation 


Housecat entangled in bedclothes watches incognito
as the housewife kneads her dough. She stretches
& folds it, layering it for winter warmth, filling
the slimness of nothing with possibilities.

Later, when she lifts a corner of blanket, she’ll discover
a single green eye floating in fabric. A switching tail
pokes another hole elsewhere, confusing her,
the opposite of compass.

The map of napping cat explains the inexplicable: 
how a lucky coin positioned in holiday batter may scatter
in the baking and be served  to our least liked relative;
and how a cat can spring up whole from a bundled blanket
to tightrope across the window ledge, batting at a butterfly
& trapping it before it can decide about the weather.
 

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