The Crane Dance

The inertial mass of two ideas
Using the same density of code
For the same-sized information,

The same amount of information,
But not just the same information,
Will prove pretty minimal. They’re text,

After all. How heavy is a thread
Of ink or binary ones and nulls?
If Galileo dropped two feathers

On the moon, not only would the moon
Treat them the same, but in airlessness,
Collisions of feather with feather

Would affect both feathers equally.
Yet the impact of information
Coded there could affect behavior

In strikingly unalike manners—
In retrospect, information
From one idea could be the winner.

This is not a thought experiment.
It has no rigor and it offers
Nothing like a testable insight.

It’s a jumble of half-digested
Middle-school physics lined in the guise
Of a literary lyric poem.

The two ideas hidden here are birds
Caught in a ritual courtship dance.
Did you spot the exchange of feathers?