Survivorship Bias

Researchers adapting the unseen
Species model from ecology
To medieval chivalric romance

Estimate ninety percent was lost
From manuscripts in that tradition.
All the stories left, just ten percent.

But how is this not like everything?
Pick a random date from your childhood.
It’s likely to be a blank in mind.

You’ll remember some day adjacent,
A form of survivorship bias
Memoirists require for coherence.

What you recall may be distorted,
But most of your life is simply gone,
As are the times in which you lived it.

Think of all the details of a day
Around the world that day, that one day.
Archives and data centers have lost

The bulk of it before it’s finished.
Feel the solar wind burning your face,
As you race like a bright-tailed comet

Around your centers of gravity
Through all your small, elliptical life.
So much vanishing trails behind you.