A little about this poem: For me, the idea for a poem can sometimes be sparked by a song lyric, or a certain phrase spoken in a podcast. This one was sparked by a memory. I was walking our beagle Amstel and noticed a patch of flowering clover in the grass. There wasn’t one honeybee on any of the blossoms. In fact, I haven’t seen a single honeybee all summer.
When I was a boy growing up in the 1970’s in Columbus, Ohio I remember how common it was to see thousands of bees in a single field of clover. This stark contrast between today and those summer days I enjoyed forty years ago set me down the path of writing this piece, The Last Generation. I hope you enjoy it.
observation
of the world
around me,
takes irrational leaps,
cataloging all
the ways
in which our world
is different now.
the past flit about,
filling me
with melancholy
in each of their
charismatic whispers,
leaving me no choice
but to measure
what we’ve gained
against all we’ve lost,
we would
walk barefoot
through a
carpet of clover,
having to step
consciously to avoid
the honeybee’s sting.
through breakfast
because we
couldn’t wait
to breathe the
fresh air and feel
the warmth of
the sun on our faces,
completely losing
ourselves in the frenzy
of our imaginations
for hours at a time,
we were accustomed
to being heard,
more often than not
with undivided attention,
try their best
to seek solutions
instead of
just spitting
out Google
search terms,
yes, the world was
less polished
and precise but
more real and
in many ways
more tangible
and free,
the last generation
to ever remember what it’s
like not to be hypnotized
by a glowing screen,
tethered to the machine.
share your stories,
leave a long trail
of breadcrumbs
so that future generations
might know what life was like
before the algorithms
and so that maybe someday
humanity might find
its way back home.
Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
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