Letter to the Future. X - Our Age

30 March 2011


Our Age

To Future,
He must have been six or so.  I'm bad at guessing ages.  Small, high pitched, thoughtful, standing no taller than my waist. He and his mom had snagged the last table in the otherwise full Starbucks, across the aisle at my ten o'clock.  I was reading a novel.  A gaggle of undergrad girls, my neighbors on the banquet I was sitting on, were plugged in, scanning Mac screens and print-outs, connected to their pockets via iBuds.  The business professional diaspora and the DU herds streamed in and out, coming from the last thing, pausing for a liquid kick, on to the next thing.  But the little boy, he was creating worlds on one hundred square inches of plyboard.  Unwittingly, he shared a narrative of embattled rocket ships with all of us, excitedly blasting a tiny wooden dowel into the air, having devoured the chocolate truffle once perched atop it.  Mom tried to keep up; he would radio Houston with progress reports, and distort his face when mom came up with too convenient a response.

State Radio

this morning
i set my ear to the speaker
and found the radio of the state
clogged with the panicked chatter of emperors

'there will be consequences
for what we've done'
they said,
with the sunrise
comes a reckoning