Of the Chaos

The final book of Porta’s

Natural Magick, published

1658, other

Sections covering beauty,

Alchemy—All the Riches

And Delights of Natural

Sciences—the stuff people

Would love to control themselves,

Seems almost abstract, modern.

People still want to get rich

And be beautiful. Chaos,

As an object of study,

Seems a more recent concern,

One for quantum physicists,

Infinity theorists,

Metalepidopterists.

But a leap year of Sundays

Ago, it was already

Awarded the closing act

Of a tour of natural

Magick in the sciences.

Chaos. A bizarre concept—

Covering the range from mere

Messiness to specified

Degree of patternlessness,

From the unpredictable

To the pure entropic soup.

Isn’t it miraculous?

If you understood chaos,

The science of the chaos,

Would any of the other

Technologies of magic

Matter, anymore, to you?