The temporary decal tattoo from the visit
To the butterfly house is down to fragments
Fading on the wrist. Daughter had one, too,
Washed off completely within a week or two.
For decades now there’s been a fondness,
Extending out from the mathematicians,
Theorists, forecasters, and general scientists
To the further tendrils of populous culture,
For the idea of chaos, hurricanes, tsunamis
Begun in a difference of butterfly wings.
Not only is it not the case, however,
That every single scintillant flicker portends
Unfathomable weather, it is sometimes
The reverse, as when the hugest changes,
Those catastrophes themselves, lead not
To vaster differences but to roughly
Equivalent situations downstream, thanks
To the erasures created by those very wings.
This appliqué tattoo reminds me as it fades
From the shedding scales of my mute skin
That despite profoundest fealty there pulses
A lack of proportion in the heart of things.
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