A pseudo-random code, they call it,
a skinny burp of bytes; long,
as such signals go, so as to be
unmistakable when listened for
by a blue plastic GPS receiver
bought at Radio Shack
on a Tuesday afternoon
from Justin, whose stainless steel
eyebrow ring indicates an
adventurous spirit,
but very short
compared to Vivaldi’s Gloria,
and unprepossessing as it sneaks
and sidles like the Artful Dodger
purposefully through thousands
of dense, powerful,
advertiser-supported signals
erupting up and cascading down
between the continents and constellations
of satellites aloft, carrying Oprah,
and the Gator Bowl,
and certain selected bursts
of sad wars, and much
richly pomaded salvation
and always the mad, mad shopping,
in living color and multi-track audio;
signals so very thick and crowded
that they could roast you alive,
until the very anonymity
of its insistent randomness is recognized,
by the blue plastic receiver,
along with a few other such
barely significant linear drawls
from far away, saying, simply,
“I’m here.” “Here I am,”
so the receiver can say, “So I am here,”
and the holder of the receiver,
in a parking lot outside a cut-rate
shoe store in a mall, sixteenth space
from the end of the fourth row,
forty-six feet above sea-level,
can look up, perhaps with a sense
of anticlimax, at a mother and her restless son
approaching with shoes for school
and think of somewhere very far away,
far enough to duck behind a mountain,
or deep enough, even as he holds
all this in his hand.
~~~~~~~~~~
Douglas Logan
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