Clinamen
by Carri M. Campanile
"Sometimes", wrote Lucretius, "at uncertain times and places,
the eternal, universal fall of the atoms is disturbed by a very slight deviation - the clinamen.
The resulting vortex gives rise to the world, to all natural things."
if
we
are falling
endlessly,
relentlessly
then we must
take what chances
we have
to break these
undeviating lines
across voids
and infinities,
across that which
we can never know
we will stack
chance upon
chance,
carve out dreams
from improbabilities
the shortest distance
being: that
which connects
one wor(l)d
to another
Copyright © 2007, Carri M. Campanile
Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Carri Campanile is a writer and artist from Tampa, Florida. Recent publications include The Journal of Speculative Fiction and Pyramid Literary Journal. She is an enthusiastic amateur astrologer and a general science-fetishist. Her work in IT and design is unobtrusive enough to give her time to obsess over mythology, genetics and epic poetry; including trying to find a way to combine them all successfully. She can be visited at www.carricampanile.com.