The Butterfly Effect of a Dropped Quarter

When people say “back in the day” it seems pernicious:
To frame a thing that way sets up divisions
Between what seemed to be and what now seems;
But both claims ought to make us most suspicious,
Since both are seeming now, and thus revisions,
And memories imaginary echoed memes.

The little things compose mythologies,
Emerging out of ordinary acts
Without volition, only retrospectively
Revealed, mysteriously in tautologies
Which contradict the narratives with facts,
More feeling than known, interoceptively.

A dropped coin sounds distinctly off of wood
Or concrete, with no consequence just then,
But echoes ever on with reverberations
In the world and in minds; the ripples could
Have greater impact far and wide again,
A distant thunder sounding in imaginations.

The expression to “drop dime” retains its sense
Long since the literal has telephoned away.
The consequences of a call remain immense
Even of information snitched back in the day.
Thus economics of telephony
Can echo ever after in infamy.

Events come flooding back in four dimensions
And differ from what was at first inferred.
The fluid traces course beyond intentions
And overflow all narrowness, till what occurred
Drowns in the wake of human voices, waves profound,
From insignificant surfaces, rebound.

That path across wide water once was cut
With purpose on its surface washed away
In its own ripples: Who remembers what
Meant so much then, a punchline people say
In passing now, in ever-changing sound,
Until all sense gets lost of what was found?

KLK
7/12/2025