Cognitive Blur #2: Tea And Extinctions

“In any sequence of random numbers,” she said,
“there are emergent bursts of order. Digit pairs.
Consecutive numbers. Strings from Pi. And like flares
in the dark these clusters stand out as if in red.

But they are just random, like clothes tossed on a bed
that fall in a pattern, an arrangement of chairs
scattered at a party that looks designed, the glares
of sun off leaves that blink like Morse code to be read.”

She sipped tea, then continued. “I think extinctions
and radiations we see in fossil records
are just clusters, the dynamics of randomness

expressed by the biosphere. The cool depictions
we see of space impacts and climate change like swords
chopping phyla is our quest-for-order madness.”