Love for Honest Mistakes

Now let us praise systematic
And nonrandom transformations,
The closest thing to causation

To be found in correlative
Consequences. Algorithms
To correct spelling and grammar

In fact much resemble the ways
Your brain corrects its own models
Of what’s happening around you

And of social information,
Including the words you’ve just met—
Meaning, even as they correct,

They introduce unforced errors,
Serendipities, and regrets.
Here, we will not entertain you

With examples. Your and your friends,
And the libraries of hive minds,
If you’re of a mind to search them,

Can adduce many instances.
Here, we wish to say that error,
When at a well-adapted rate,

Is the best way to mimic facts,
As error is a subspecies
Of the most common type of change—

Irregular, unlike rhythms
(Which are those kinds of change named time),
And yet rarely catastrophic,

By which they mime catastrophe,
Also irregular and rare.
Errors are not deliberate,

Although their possibility
(Viz. importance of rate, above)
May be fixed deliberately,

And in this, too, they imitate
The habit of the world at large
To mostly change by increments,

Scattered and clustered, here and there,
Predictable as probable
But only certain in hindsight.

You live indeterminate lives
Of approximate survival
By ongoing estimation

Of how fast your pasts will change next,
Whether you toil in offices
Or go screaming into battle,

Whether you’re quietly eyeing
The days going by for good scraps,
Or hellbent to right the right wrongs.

Mistakes, meanwhile, serve your truest,
Most faithful methods for mapping
The shapes of the ways waves move on.