No Emails! Poem by David Lewis Paget

‘There are no emails in the box for you,
There are no emails, ' it said,
That message had sat on my page for days
Like a note for the newly dead,
I sat and stared at the vacant screen
Like a litany for the lost,
All of my friends were a cyber dream
As I soon found out, to my cost.

My thoughts went back for many a year
When the friends that I had were real,
The ones I'd meet in the supermart
The ones I could see, and feel,
The friends that I'd had of flesh and blood
Who had drifted into my past,
Did they sit and stare at an empty screen
And hope for a word at last?

When I was away they had written screeds
And sent by the penny post,
While I'd sit nights by a reading lamp
Replying, not all, but most,
We told each other of babies born,
Of fights we'd had with the boss,
And laughed together when I came home
Over dreams and the schemes we tossed.

But as life went on and the world got old
Our friends had drifted away,
While all of us got too busy then
With the fax and the phone to play,
We would close our doors when the day was done
And stare at a silent screen,
Would reach on out to the people there
Who lived in the cyber scene.

And we forged new friendships over the net
As we roamed in the world out wide,
We made us hundreds of friends out there
In towns and the countryside,
It was mind to mind, there was nothing else
No flesh to press, no kiss,
We knew that we'd never meet, no hugs
Our link, a computer dish!

I sit alone and I wait for you,
Your messages on the screen,
That make me feel I'm connected, though
The best I can do is dream,
For a single glitch in the i.s.p.
Will stop the electron flow,
And cut us off from our new-found friends
When the email box says, ‘No! '

6 March 2013