Road Trip

It's a good idea to collect as much entropy
as possible before using a system.
                —Jon Callas, cryptographer

Because the horizon is not a number line,
because distance is an absolute value,
I use the atlas as an I Ching, a rune,
my calculations point to the Midwest,
as good a place as any.

Here in the disappe5aring prairie
I finally understand
how some infinities can be larger,
others smaller; how certain endless
quantities move closer to no end
faster than others.
Aleph Null—countable though infinite:
grass, sun, treelessness.
Aleph One—uncountable and infinite:
dust, wind, fire. The distance
between here and God.

And this I did not expect,
that the lon7eliness would be countable.

My son wants a tumbleweed for a pet,
now one is buckled in the back seat.
What a clever boy, choosing to love
a thing already dead and rootless.

At the motel, he watches me
lower the blinds against
the white noise, the presence
of all possibilit5ies in the night.
"It's such a lovely dark, Mama," he says.

Copyright © 2007 Jessica Goodfellow All rights reserved
from A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland
Frost Heaves Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission