Future Farmer
Digital records will replace all our lives,
the time that we spent here, our climb and descent.
Once your carcass's encrypted, they'll peruse the
archives
of your xrays and photos of places you went.
Will your life take up one gig or two, maybe four?
What about all those brilliant attachments you sent,
you performer, informer, you menace, you bore
who once plastered the web with your intimate facts,
your ideas, your amateur artwork and more?
You've put it all out there; you can't take it back:
not the bit about eating a bluebird for lunch
or your sporadic vows to take all you stole back
to the farmer who lived just a mile from your place,
who trusted you to take good care of his daughter
and never missed all the tomatoes that tasted
so good and so free, once you washed them in water
re-routed from Aberdeen's farm to the south
as delicious as O'Reilly's pigs fresh from
slaughter
and other robbed food that you raised to your mouth
to feed your raw taste for the hard work of friends
you disdained and told lies to, to cover the doubt
that you brought more than words and amends
to the table, that someday you'd show them who you truly are
not just talker or taker, but someone who lends
a strong hand when it's needed, a good friend from afar --
more than wheat chaff; a guy who they might just depend
on to leave more than a hyperlinked dead avatar.
