Chaos Theory Applied to Pigeons

 

A strange title, I know.

The title, in fact, of a stage play

I wrote in my late teens.

 

The manuscript was lost to me

many years ago. I don’t even remember

what the play was about.

 

But the title is intriguing. I’ve always been able

to remember the title: Chaos Theory Applied to Pigeons.

What a fantastic blockbuster it would have been.

 

I was doing a lot of acid when I wrote

Chaos Theory Applied to Pigeons.

And I was living with a girl in an old stone cottage

 

somewhere in the Cotswolds.

I remember the year – 1978. And I remember

that acid wasn’t her drug of choice.

 

Were we the pigeons to whom chaos theory

was being applied ?

Possibly. Probably. More than likely.

 

Her name escapes me, I’m afraid.

She had a brother, though, I remember that much

someone, I sense now, that I didn’t much like.

 

Like all good drama there had to be a third person in our relationship.

But in my play he wouldn’t have been a pigeon like us.

I’m certain of that.

 

A cat, perhaps.

Or a duck. Or an irritatingly blocked up drain.

But not a pigeon.

 

I think I sent the manuscript

to a theatre in London.

I don’t recall a reply.

 

A letter may have been received and gone unnoticed.

After all, things were rather chaotic

during that period of my life.

 

We were probably too busy

sitting around, drug induced, cooing

flapping our wings.

 

I like to think the manuscript exists still

fifty or so years later

on the top shelf of a tiny room

 

in a London theatre.

It will be dusty and neglected certainly,

the type written pages beginning to fade,

 

but waiting in silent anticipation

of being taken off the shelf and becoming the blockbuster

it always knew it could be.