I recall girls’ chants while skipping rope,
while we boys played ball on the lawn,
angering wasps as we’d abscond,
simple pole-fishing, simple field ponds.
Then … someone waved a magic wand,
a spell with concrete trucks and wires,
in theaters with Indy and Mike Myers,
suburban homes, for new home buyers.
Burgeoning changes began to transpire,
from five stations to cable to streaming,
from trash talk to internet memeing,
after it all … still looking for meaning.
I must’ve blinked, or I was dreaming …
no chance to say goodbye to my past,
in a new society moving way too fast,
far too rapid for anything to last.
About our future we never were asked,
teetering on verge of digital revolution,
new markets with global distribution,
new problems, pleading for solutions.
It’s progress, but a progress of dilution?
Contrasted with memories from before,
constantly believing we now have more,
yet … one another, we routinely ignore.
In digitally-oriented lives, always bored,
slowly ceding our reality as real persons,
instant-gratification info-immersion,
no telling, our final future version.
Exercising caution casting aspersion,
shunning all too familiar Luddite tropes?
Maybe, but with memories we still cope,
with losing innocent dreams and hopes …
No more chants of girls skipping rope.
