by Robin Chapman

THE GORILLA THAT WALKS THROUGH THE BASKETBALL GAME

Thirty professors at the chaos talk
on how the mind works,
we watch the white-shirted players
on the videoscreen, doing our assigned job
of counting the number of passes they make,
not so easy when two different balls
have appeared in play, and our counts
at the end of the videoclip vary–
eleven say some, fourteen insist others–
but we’re feeling good
that we’ve kept our eyes on the balls
and the hands and the backs,
carried out our appointed task,
and when we’re asked
if we noticed anything odd, no one nods;
though shown the replay
we see we’ve missed
the gorilla that wanders through
the twist of bodies,
crossing the court
from left to right in a leisurely way,
looking about with curiosity–
leaving us shaken by the query
of what else we’ve missed in our lives
keeping our eye on the ball.

–from Images of a Complex World:
The Art and Poetry of Chaos (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2005, by Robin Chapman & Julien Clinton Sprott).