Reckoner
Since we uploaded into the cloud
the earth misses us the ground
It hasn’t rained for months
The sleek new skins of our hand-
held devices flash menacingly calm
like the pearl blank face of the water
::
We go down to the lake
and bathe in its shades: gin clear
fluorescent grey
All our campfire girls
All our drowned fuselages and kelped wrecks
All our pine pollen soft parades
Our mouthfuls and gulped breaths
How many gigabytes is that?
::
Sometimes we float, bumping along
shoulder to shoulder in the screensaver
blue in a simulacrum of friendship
If we’re not in the lake
where are we?
Seen and unseen
like a Ghost Man on second
like a child worker in China
::
Sometimes we float in it almost
bodiless lost in the flickering
voices that will not save us
Even with value added
The pony-tailed technician
who assembled and wiped
to a loving sheen
our delicately cheap touchscreens
her little hands are ruined
by the solvents
by the robotic maneuvers
so we can share
with smudgeless clarity
She doesn’t even know
how to swim
::
Teenaged girls drop from factory eaves
like spiraled cones raining
from pine boughs
in a sudden gust
Circles touching circles
spreading
across faces
We take and we take and
we tag
::
On the lakeshore a mother mallard
nestles into needles to make her
home above rocks
where a boy with a stick
is sure to find her
Where is your warm hand
for my hand?
No comments:
Post a Comment