Reality

Inundation – the current malaise

richinaword My Poems Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Electronic communication across the airways in one form or another is inundating our lives 24 by 7. How is everyone coping with the onslaught. Here is a poem recently read on ABC Radio in Canberra.

Inundation 
(Terms & Conditions Apply)
At dawn I woke …  well, not by choice,
but to my phone’s persistent voice:
a buzz, a ping, a cheerful chime
informing me it’s “screen-time time.”
“Your steps are slow.” “Your sleep was poor.”
(Yes, thank you, I had guessed that score.)
“energy low.” “be sure to rest.”
my watch tells me I’m not the best.
Three emails marked “just circling back,”
two family chats, she’s gone off track
the granddaughter won’t take advice
accept behaviour, and “be nice.”
An ad appeared (how did it know?)
for shoes I searched three weeks ago.
Then slippers, shirts and hats instead,
my thoughts are sponsored in my head.
“Flash sale ends in minutes, act!”
(a most suspicious kind of fact)
“Upgrade your life!” “Improve your skin!”
I can’t recall what state I’m in.
I fled outside, no battery need
just trees and sky and space to breathe …
but after a peaceful hour or so …
I felt detached from the daily flow.
No buzzing praise, no gentle shove,
no algorithmic kind of love;
no one to tell me what to buy …
or count my steps or optimise.
So here I sit, in quiet doubt,
half wanting in, half opting out;
for peace is nice … but, truth be told,
it doesn’t buzz … or take control.
And so I say, (with a get real grin)
accept the world you’re living in!

Footnote
I said a hi to AI
and asked AI to have a say.
In a blink
it’s up to you, and what you think!

Richard Scutter Sept 2026

Thank you for including me in your electronic life!

Angels – Mary Oliver – Comments

richinaword Poetry analysis Tags: , , , 2 Comments

Angels

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s heads.

I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.

Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019)

This is all to do with how we and others see the world. We know what we see and how we feel. How we articulate this in a way that others can understand is another matter. And equally the converse is true.

And how much do we understand another person? But to help there is that intersecting commonality between peoples based on common life experience and the fact that we are all of the human variety.

In this poem by Mary Oliver there is a plea to be accepting of what others say however ridiculous it might seem. And she suggests living in the ‘perhaps’ for it is true that we can never really get into the head of another. So if someone says they have seen an ‘angel’ or anything else truly out of the ordinary then who are we to deny the sighting and in due course perhaps we might see the same.

Of course ‘angels’ come in many forms and there is one sitting in the chair across the room at the moment. I don’t know about the dancing element!

Perhaps the first stanza is sufficient combined with the first line of the second, if I might suggest my perhaps on first reading this poem.

Mary Oliver died in January last year … a Wikipedia link