Poetry inspired by Chaos

Poet Robin Chapman studies the language learning of children -- and has collaborated with physics professor Julien Sprott on a lovely and fascinating collection The Art and Poetry of Chaos:  Images from a Complex World (World Scientific, 2005).  In the following poem Chapman offers (as she does throughout the poetry of the collection) a human interpretation of technical terminology.  

     The Nearest Neighbor Rules     by Robin Chapman

     To your four nearest neighbors

     offer keys, pet-sitting, lawn mowing,

     snow-shoveling, house-watching

     on vacation days, extra bloodroot.

     To your eight nearest neighbors,

     a hand raised in greeting,

     praise for their flower beds,

     inquiries about grown children.

     To your sixteen nearest neighbors,

     a wave on walks, comments

     on their child's new bike,

     visits in the spring and fall.

     To your thirty-two nearest neighbors,

     common cause in traffic signals,

     nods in passing, park clean-up,

     firewood scavenging.

     To your sixty-four nearest neighbors,

     a look in lit windows

     on winter night walks, a knock

     to offer voter registration.

"Nonlinear Function," another Chapman poem from The Art and Poetry of Chaos may also be found in the anthology Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (Eds Glaz, Growney, A K Peters, 2008).