poetry notebook

O! Thou nonexistent nanosecond switching entity without dimension
in whose embrace the globe communicates in peace,
within whose fractured networks of routers, cables, and switches
communities manifest of unseen individuals not ghosts
but not known to be corporeal but by informal evidence
that transport emotional connections through transmissions of light
along routes not predetermined, without designer,
without a passport or customs agent, carrying ideas that question
fundamental assumptions of our own existence separately
walking through space upon a thin crust whirling so fast
we can’t keep up by running or even flying in a subsonic transport
so that our position shifts at breakneck speed but we perceive
each moment to be still as Shasta, lost among galaxies and stars.

Only three of our senses know you directly: the eye, the ear,
and the mind — or so it seems.
Do these even perceive you?
Do we mistake because we don’t look closely enough
the translation of your packet transmissions for the Internet itself?
Is streaming music, running through local software into magnets
and paper that vibrates the air the same as the you? Or different?
Or the same and different? Or neither?

O sprawling one! O wild one! O World Wide Web!
What are you? Can we hold you in our mind,
encompass you with a concept
that contains everything you are?
Who speaks these words that scroll along my screen?
Who paints this image slowly clarifying of another
thousands of miles away? What does distance mean?
Is it farther from Calcutta to California than from across the room?

O! World Wide Web!
You nonexistent entity!
You empty transmitter!
You store of vast riches!
You conductor of presence
across oceans and mountains and plains!
You receptor of signals
from far reaches of perceivable space!
Will we ever know you directly?
Will we ever jack in, relax,
and know ourselves to be
inseparable from you?