A friend asks of me, over a lukewarm beer,
Do you think we’ll be the last generation
to remember life before technology?

He does not mean technology in the broad sense,
of course. Not television or radio,
cars or telephones. No, he qualifies
that technology has been our companion,
the constant measure of our intellect,
since two thick cranium-ed hominids
struck two rocks, in a quick burst
of inspiration, curious and perhaps
driven by some innate yearning,
and created in their very hands
the same embered, dancing light
as that mysterious orb above

My friend, a musician with a flair
for physics and electronica,
means will we be the last of our species
to remember that communication
is one body beside another, conducting
flourishes of heat and dimensional twist,
so our electric responses are measured
viscerally: the languorous fall of limbs
onto a couch, the quick glissade of eye lids
when the lights go on, the dissonant chortle
of laughter at our feeble contortions
and contrite, minor acts of affection

~

I have found few sounds more pleasing
than forty five thousand bodies
all conversing in one breath,
neither in agitation or despair,
but in that rare space between:
Sunday afternoon, a luminous indigo
sky, all our bodies brought to rest
besides friends and family. Hear
this susurrant lull with me,
one voice indistinguishable
from the next so we rise and
ebb in sound like subatomic beings
in motion, an assonant wave of
breath, iambic verses without
beginning or end, just Philadelphia
come to the ballpark in May

~

Nature has its forms much as we do.
A maple leaf’s skin is veined
with the meticulous tunings of Da Vinci;
A snail’s whirlpool shield curves
with the sinuous brush of Van Gogh;
The cornices of a lambent ruby
are sharp as the kick and turn
of a flamenco dancer in summer

Hurricanes and galaxies spin with wordless
malice while we have devised our own
formula for their preternatural symmetry:
A novel, a sentence, a poem all
rhythmic and rhymed…

All in this universe is form.
I still scour the depths for mine.