Meditation on my Blackberry

You are the fruit
Of a strange and lifeless tree:
My little rectangular heart,
Rear-view mirror of my conscience,
Insomniac engine of my endless days.

You emerge from a seed of wisdom --
The knowledge that we are all connected --
But you are a mutation:
You do not connect us
So much as you ensnare us.
We are alone,
Tied by your tentacles
Into an info-world
Made hollow and blinking and blue.

Priorities without meaning,
Messages without
Content:
These are the gifts you bear.

We bow low to your screen,
Waste our thumbs in obeisance to you,
Call out for connection
But are never fully joined
To those who beckon.

Even so, i thank you:
You always do your best,
You do not complain;
You exist to serve.

You are humility,
Clipped to my waist,
You are community
In a cube.

Like you, i will do my best,
Not complain,
Exist to serve;

And there,
We shall part ways.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for Yourself

May you remember that each breath you take is the first in a long chain of breaths, stretching down to all those who will be touched by you, loved by you; by those who descend from you, and by those who honor your memory.

May you remember that each breath you take is the last in a long chain of breaths, drawn from ancestors, all the way back to The Very First.

May you honor all these, with each breath.

May you be thirsty.

May you remove a splinter from your thumb.

And peel a grape.

And go an entire day without hearing an engine or an electrical appliance.

May you remember a grievous wrong done to you, and think of something very funny you could have done in response.

May you remember your calling.

May you fall out of bed.

May you make your own ice cream.

And eat it.

And may you hear crickets, and distant thunder, on an evening in August, when you are not in a hurry and the dishes have already been done.

--Mr. Gobley

A 10-gallon fish tank, in the dark

suspended in the invisible,
buoyed in a liquid
that always seeks the most direct route
to the lowest place,

they breathe

kept in a cube,
they sense large creatures,
shards of light,
feel the thud
of our footfall

each morning,
the heavens open,
the light returns with a burst:

mannah!

for now,
they have made their peace
with each other

for now, it is dark,
and they sense both
relief and terror,
and from their fellow travelers,
companionship
and competition

soon it will be light again;
soon, the heavens will erupt
with light, and a shower
of nourishment;

for now, the filter breathes,
and they with it;

and all is quiet,
and still,
and fleeting,
and strange;

all is visible,
but nothing is within reach . . .

--Mr. Gobley