Metropolitan Diary; I Am G-d, Your Blackberry

ON THE L.I.R.R.

Their fingers clack away on tiny keys,

fretting, as if counting rosaries,

heads bowed in homage to the deity

to whom all praise is due, the BlackBerry.

To iPods wired, into their brains infuse

music that eclipses any muse.

Time and space around them they invade

as phone talk scars my quiet, makes me trade

reading and thinking to hear of what they spent

or ate or who said what — my ears are bent!

No quiet stillness can they seem to hold;

to small machines their restless souls they’ve sold.

One might have the makings of a poet,

but plugged in thus, will probably never know it.

-Sheri Lindner