This is an allusion to The
Butterfly Effect:

Mama said,
"All life is precious."
As a child, I
picked the insects on the leaves
and gave them such affection.

Five squeezes.
Ephemeral wings underneath
the hungry cave of my swine fingers:
shadflies;
     ladybirds;
          crickets (they cry at night,
because that is the only way they know
how to sing);
and butterflies, whose flight might
have spawned a typhoon, not far
from where we slept,
where the sun rises--or when it doesn't;
an accidental killer.

Mama looks at the remains,
(of the paper wings, because now
the body was underfoot)
and tenderly I straightened her curls,
only this time I couldn't see
the outline of her face. Her ice
was raw, and weeping.

All life is precious.
The woodlice squirms below
the end of my pen, a silent death,
but the butterflies will come later, so I let it go;

The dynamics of life,
and all that is held sacred. and laboriously tended
within equilibrium,
can be purposelessly chaotic.