Digitalis

By Doug Logan

With GPS and text and tweet,
with Google search and Google maps
and zoomed-in views of every street
and all those other handy apps;

with 3G here and Wi-Fi there
and data packets streaming past
and Bluetooth transfer everywhere
and all the wikis filling fast,

we need no longer memorize
or plan, or wait, or understand;
we merely have to energize
and tap a screen with each demand.

Why trouble much to learn or know
more than the flick of find and fetch,
and where electric sockets grow,
and how far charging cords will stretch?

A comfort of our own kind around,
we stoke the rumors that we heed
and spurn all those who would confound
the dogged dogmas that we breed.

Connections thought to interrelate
but made in bilious density
turn out instead to separate,
fanning passionate intensity.

Not touching things that might leave scars,
not caring what disturbs and scares,
we're safe and svelte in cyber bars,
death dealt by joystick from our chairs.

Recall the brilliant foxglove plant
which tamed will tame the frantic heart,
but taken raw will trip a rant,
then stupefy and tear apart.

Doug Logan is a former editor of Sailing World and Practical Sailor, and has written about boats and the sea for a long time. He has also edited UCLA Healthy Years, a consumer newsletter. He worked in New York as an editor of novels, nautical books, and publications on U.S.-Soviet relations. He runs a blog on conservation and alternative energy at www.newenergywatch.com, and one with poems at www.burgoo.net.