October 15, 2026

This poem is exactly as it describes, several fragments of ideas formed over weeks of walking. I only finally got smart enough to realize that the fragments are exactly the point.

I always assumed at this point in life,

Creation would rush in as a torrent,

Thought begetting thought,

The best to be nurtured,

Some discarded without regret,

That on every morning walk

With a new day's wisp of scent,

Sight or sound, I'd have an idea so profound

That I'd have to rein the dog,

Take a moment to record the line,

And smile as I twisted it around in my mind

Until I could get home to write it down.

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But that's not how it's working out:

Fragments abound like artifacts 

Of a thousand-year old earthquake,

Corners of cornice, pieces of plaster,

Evidence of every-day life of no value,

Like the broken crockery of Pompeii.

I decry the decay all around us

For the lack of beauty wrapped in verse.

Why should archivists capture character 

When leaders achieve caricature?

Any belief that lessons can be learned

Seems a little bit premature.

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If there is intelligent life in a galaxy

Far away from the one we inhabit,

Their window is closed and smashed,

A contact vein now concrete and barbed wire.

The execution will not be televised,

The guilty never stood a chance,

Hands wrung create more distraction

Than idle hands in the devil's workshop.

In a world where information's scattershot

And we have problems completing a thought,

We should be praying that the robots

Do manage to kill us all off.