THE OLD LADY DISCOVERS FACEBOOK
AND OFFERS A SORT OF APOLOGY
All you want to do
is touch. It used to be easy,
while winnowing grain or stalking beasts.
Your bodies remember
the smell of sweat in the longhouse,
gossip by the well,
embraces under the trees.
Once you spoke while hanging wash
or mending nets or minding babies
or scything hay or boiling sap
or making shoes or spinning thread
or pounding nails or stitching quilts.
Now
you are scattered like chaff,
dispersed as hunted game,
and so are we.
Oh, children, do not complain at us!
We are as exiled as you.
Like you we want to find our friends
and digging is so hard.
Disembodied
as you, we post lines
and flickers to our tornaway tribes.
Now the ether carries in bits
our sketchy sentences, our loneliness,
tears that this strange communication
without skin or breath can maybe begin to mend.
I wrote this years ago, when I first joined facebook. Now that I’ve deleted my account, I find it intriguing that this was the original intent.
GladErrand 