Reckoner

Since we uploaded into the cloud

the earth misses us

It hasn’t rained for months

The sleek new skins of our hand-

held devices flash

like the blank face of the lake

We go down to it and bathe

in its shades: gin clear fluorescent grey

~

Sometimes we float

bumping along shoulder to shoulder

in a simulacrum of friendship

in the blue

Is that you?

Seen and unseen

like a Ghost Man on second

like an underage labor camp

If we’re not in it

where are we?

~

All our campfire girls

All our drowned fuselages and kelped wrecks

All our pine pollen soft parades

Our mouthfuls and gulped breaths

How many gigabytes is that?

~

Sometimes we float in it almost

bodiless lost in the flickering

voices that will never save us

even with all that

value added

~

The touchscreen technician

who assembled and wiped

to a delicate sheen

our smartbook faceplate

Her little hands are ruined

by the solvents

by the rhythms

~

Like little cones

raining from the pines

teenaged girls drop from factory eaves

Circles touching circles

spreading across faces

Yours mine theirs

We take and we take and we tag

~

On the lakeshore a mother mallard

nestles into needles to make her

home above rocks

where a boy with a stick

is sure to find her

Where is your warm hand

for my hand?