This poem complains about the constant noise of modern life, and the incessant and often trivial demands for our attention. Sometimes, we just need to turn it all off.Â
Wishing you relief, in this time of noise and bluster!Â
For those who don’t know, Walter Cronkite was a news anchor on CBS in the seventies when I was growing up. Half an hour with him was enough to make you feel you understood what was happening in the world. (Although most people made sure to read the paper as well!) Even in the midst of Watergate, the Viet Nam War, kidnappings, hijackings, protests and uprisings of all sorts, his voice made you feel, like everything was going to be all right.
Thanks for coming by to read!
Passwords. Emails. Insurrections.
Voices whimpering: internet.
Voices shouting: television.
Is the racket over yet?
Advertisements want my eyeballs.
Blogs insist I stay onscreen.
Threats of imminent destruction.
Faulty voting on machines.
Lord, where is that voice I trusted?
Walter Cronkite, rise again!
Tell me, should I be disgusted?
What is happening? Where and when?
Facts and facts and yet more facts
Should shape my gaping-open mind.
Yet what I see is parallax:
My lens distorts the view I find.
Escaping screens, I sit at nightfall
On the porch. The darkness thickens.
Summer breeze wafts over all.
Silence. All I hear is crickets.
Copyright 2021 Andrea LeDew
For more on how gardens replicate and nurture life, read A Rose in Winter, Spring Fashion, The Secret Garden (an essay) and Quarantine.
Your poem reminds me of two camps in the Vermont woods, my dad’s and my aunt’s, where nightime was without human noise and there was no ambiant light, just moon and stars.
“Sounds” like a lovely place to escape to. We need to be reminded sometimes, what a tiny part of creation we really are.
Indeed, we do.