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black swan theory

“a black swan is a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. taleb nassim regards many scientific discoveries as black swans—”undirected” and unpredicted. he gives the september 11, 2001 attacks as an example of a black swan event.

the term black swan comes from the ancient western conception that all swans were white. in that context, a black swan was a metaphor for something that could not exist. the 17th century discovery of black swans, cygnus atratus in australia metamorphosed the term to connote that the perceived impossibility actually came to pass.
 

Dead Doe

by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

The doe lay dead on her back in a field of asters: no. 

The doe lay dead on her back beside the school bus stop: yes. 

Where we waited. 
Her belly white as a cut pear. Where we waited: no: off 

from where we waited: yes 

at a distance: making a distance 
we kept, 
as we kept her dead run in sight, that we might see if she chose 
to go skyward; 
that we might run, too, turn tail 
if she came near 
and troubled our fear with presence: with ghostly blossoming: with 
  the fountain’s 
  unstoppable blossoming 
  and the black stain the algae makes when the water 
  stays near. 

We can take the gilt-edged strolling of the clouds: yes. 
But the risen from the dead: no! 

The haloey trouble-shooting of the goldfinches in the bush: 
  yes: but in season: 

kept within bounds, 

not in the pirated rows of corn, 
not above winter’s pittance of river. 

The doe lay dead: she lent 
  her deadness to the morning, that the morning might have weight, that 
  our waiting might matter: be upheld by significance: by light 
  on the rhododendron, by the ribbons the sucked mint 
  loosed on the air, 

by the treasonous gold-leaved passage of season, and you 

from me/child/from me/ 

from … not mother: no: 
but the weather that would hold you: yes: 

hothouse you to fattest blooms: keep you in mild unceasing rain, and 
  the fixed 
  stations of heat: like a pedaled note: or the held 
  breath sucked in, and stay: yes: 
stay 

but: no: not done: can’t be: 

the doe lay dead: she could 
do nothing: 

the dead can mother nothing … nothing 
but our sight: they mother that, whether they will or no: 

they mother our looking, the gap the tongue prods when the tooth is 
  missing, when 
  fancy seeks the space. 

The doe lay dead: yes: and at a distance, with her legs up and frozen, 
  she tricked 
  our vision: at a distance she was 
  for a moment no deer 
at all 

but two swans: we saw two swans 
  and they were fighting 
  or they were coupling 
  or they were stabbing the ground for some prize 
  worth nothing, but fought over, so worth that, worth 
the fought-over glossiness: the morning’s fragile-tubed glory. 


And this is the soul: like it or not. Yes: the soul comes down: yes: comes 
into the deer: yes: who dies: yes: and in her death twins herself into swans: 
fools us with mist and accident into believing her newfound finery 

and we are not afraid 
though we should be 

and we are not afraid as we watch her soul fly on: paired 
as the soul always is: with itself: 
  with others. 
  Two swans…. 

Child. We are done for 
in the most remarkable ways.