Dawn of the Electronic Age Poet
I. A DESPERATE BALANCE
Staring at another document
etched into glowing phosphor
on my computer screen,
patterns of light shift
page to page. Then gazing with soft eyes
across the depths of my home canyon,
the tops of the tallest redwoods
disappear in the mist.
For every shining character
passing before my eyes
blending into words,
paragraphs and articles, There is a single leaf
on the madrone
poking up through my
faded redwood deck,
hidden in its canopy of
shining green.
For every keystroke I
hammer onto my keyboard
causing a letter of harsh light
to appear before my eyes, I place one soft footstep
onto the forest floor,
fading as I walk on
to the next.
For each poem I read
on the worldwide network
electronically linking poets
across distances
unknown to me, I have to read one poem aloud
on the road to La Honda
down the canyon back of the skyline
ridge separating Silicon Valley
from the creeping Pacific fog.
Halfway to the coast,
behind distant greys
of endless redwood ridges,
I stop, and
leaning across a perfect white fence,
I read this poem aloud
to a white horse
in front of the red barn
that everyone in the Bay Area
has photographed.
Every poem I
post to this network,
electronically published
to countless poets [and readers?]
around the shrunken wide
world, I must write longhand
in pencil
or Chinese brush pen
on fine rice paper
over and over
until it is complete.
II SPONTANEOUS BALANCE
Whenever a new silicon chip
is designed to run faster
than a 486 or a SPARC, A youth discovers poetry or painting
behind closed doors in his room
in the twilit dark.
A fiber optic cable
connects an ethernet wire
to another site's local network
linking in new clusters
of electronic machines, And a student reads
a notice on a campus kiosk
and enrolls in a class in
Chinese painting
with a master artist
from Beijing.
When I discovered computers
as a tool to explore
mathematical reaches of the
electronic mind,
to free myself from the drudgery
of algebra class, Someone, also in junior high school,
somewhere unknown to me,
learned to play the cello
to feel the deep vibration
and the dark throb of the musical
earth.
III CONNECTIONS
For every poet discovering the thrill
of this network of minds disembodied into
keystrokes sending electron pulses
forming ascii characters
etched in thousands of bits of phosphor
or laser-driven particles of black toner
onto two-dimensinal trees, A boy, out of breath running
hard across the green field
of the neighborhood soccer league
discovers the connection:
thigh to calf, ankle to Nike,
sending the round ball
across the field,
teammate's ankle to Nike,
relayed into the waiting goal,
releasing throb of jubilation
echoed in speeding pulse and
roar of sparse crowd
ringing the cold Saturday
morning field.
My words linked to other minds
across this worldwide network of
characters built from patterns
patterns of more or less
electronic flux stored on
thin rotating magnetic disks.
Transmitted across
long wires to other disks,
copied to other nodes
in other states.
Read by other poets,
triggering thoughts, ideas
sparking between the collective synapses
of this network of poets
across the country
around the entire
world. I see the veins of a leaf
networking in tiny detail
across every square fraction
of an inch, every round
chloroplast shining its bit of
green to the world. Converting
pulses of red light to sugars
transported through many veins
to neighbors near and far
linked throughout this
entire tall
tree.
Cybernetic researcher
studies the effects
of this connectivity
and the ensuing acceleration of
the expansion and evolution of
the collective consciousness
presiding over the shrinking of
the world's borders and
its sphere of linked
nondistances. Young drummer returns
from travels culminating
decades of research into the
rhythms formed by countless
hands creating the soul of
many cultures,
Drumming, brings
The music of the world from
The Edge of Magic to the
beating hearts and souls of
the modern people.
For in Technology And in Rhythm,
there is Spirit, Soul.
Simran Singh Gleason