Sitting on a wooden bench on the beach
I watch the waves press themselves out of a smooth sea
And slide across the sand
In a mass grave of humbled pride

A summer breeze cools my naked back
Around me I see people enjoying themselves
Couples with and without children
Hands filled with dark slabs of shiny glass
Glittering surfaces tempting them into a world that is not there

Is mine?
Why this sense of estrangement within me?
Have I become so attached to the ebb and flow of my animal nature?
Should I too seek refuge in the world inside the screen?
What is this voice inside of me, protesting
Against the facile emptiness I see around me?

Is it perhaps because a screen holds no real surprises?
Neutering us into a tensionless mediocrity
Of eternal sunshine
Where shadows cannot dance?
Where the menace of suffering and the lightness of surrender
Have disappeared into a synthetic illusion of at-oneness?

My thoughts are interrupted as a child runs by
I see him stumble and fall
Face forward into the warm sand
His mouth and nose covered with foreign dust
Our eyes meet
A spark ignites
And fright gives way to laughter

© JH, Spright-Art