Road Trip

by Jessica Goodfellow

"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.

via versedaily