print previewback RYAN WALSH
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
so we can share
with smudgeless clarity
~
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? 
