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The Nature Channel | Poem

 
 

The Nature Channel


Welcome --- 
You have entered 
The Nature Channel.
You have escaped 
the Concrete Jungle 
and are now in 
Virtual Country. 

Here lie trees 
and heather-paved lands, 
blown tranquilly over the precipice 
of a childhood past, 
which strife had banished forever. 

Bargains, bargains, 
too many to count! 

Our virtual pines are but 
two bits an hour. 

A mere two bits 
brings 
5 minutes of trees 
on your private screen 
(and just 10 cents more 
gives you wind 
blowing through them!). 

Look, if you will, 
at the box marked "Clouds". 
Cumulus, cirrus- 
we have 'em all!! 

Just 4 bits an hour 

(and 5 cents more gives you 
wind blowing through them!) 

Click the third box over 
and pastures loom up on 
the sea of your set, 
green with grass or yellow with 
flowers, 

you choose the colors 
(just 50 cents more!) 

You have entered 
The Nature Channel, 
a place to escape the 
concrete sky, 
the blare of asphalt --- 
the shout and the clamor 
of metal and glass. 

Here we have 
a neon bath 
that out-flanks any native spring, 
a pixeled swirl of light and sound; 

here lie rivers you left behind 
in a lovelorn youth. 

Here the thunder, 
there the lightning 
wishboning out of despair, 
the words with which you crouched and prayed 
a million nights ago. 

Deaths of dawn, 
and births of dusk, 
swans on the lake, 
and the ducks on the drake. 

Capture it live, 
or tape it for later, 

(when you're lost with 
your head in the 
snows of your bed) 

We've got it all 
just waiting to happen, 
(if you send your credit 
when credit is due). 

It's all been sponsored 
for days in advance, 
so why take the chance? 

On days when the city 
can't leave you alone, 

when you die for relief 
from the gloom and the grief 

and the sound of a drone 
hangs dead on the phone 

(It's yours --- 
just dollars a day!!)

- Paul Kesler
.
to Paul
to Moongate