The Dead Letter Offices of Cyberspace

The Dead Letter Offices of Cyberspace
 
One thinks sometimes of sorting
plants lost in cyberspace,
imagining how they must chug-along,
filling up like water buckets
in a summer storm,
brimming with emails to
the Dearly Disconnected,
fine and pointless expressions
of passion or distress,
or simply “won’t you come to dinner?”
or “these autumn days grow short.”
 
Perhaps this is merely an
idiot’s delusion, for I find myself
these days typing missives doomed
never to arrive, not knowing and
never imagining the worst,
assuming only that a friend
has been tardy in communications
or still holds that peculiar grudge
and nothing more.
 
And yet, how they must shoot forth,
thousands a day I bet,
emails to the Beyond so trivial
they are better trashed,
“a sale on at Walmart,” or
“Guess what my dog did today.”
But there must be those too,
bearing thoughts we’d rather not consider,
“I fear the growing dark” or
“I face the loss of all” or:
“Sometimes I feel there is no one
here, not even God, though to him
I am grateful, for still I have you.”