Endpoints

Open or closed? Does it still converge

at the boundary? At the brink, the edge,

are we still good? Still in business?

Inside R, a comfort zone,

a neighborhood of safety.

Absolute and uniform,

a perfectly honest sum.

For epsilon less, we’re okay.

March in tiny steps like Zeno’s arrow,

velocity’s vector tending to zero,

never arrive, and it’s fine.

But if it breach o, the arrow hits

its mark, normal to the heart.

To infinity, eternity, the series diverges.

Harmonic perhaps, but playing a dirge

on a funeral march to forever.

Or slow as Log floating downstream,

Charon’s rowboat is certainly faster.

The steady Tortoise could keep up,

but even swift-footed Achilles

would never cross this finish line.

[Title poem of a series composed on the theme "The End?", read a conference organized by the graduate school in English at Indiana University]