The Virtues of Division                                       


            In our blessed digital age
 
            Everything is
 
            Either or
            On or off
            In or out
            Plus or minus
            Up or down
            Left or right
            Top or bottom
            Win or lose
            Positive or negative
 
            But mainly
            One or none
 
            Forgetting for the moment that in the matter of digits
            There are really ten or twenty
            Depending
            And that you can’t count on
            Nothing to exist
 
            I suppose you can explain the growth of trees
            The evolution of a pout
            A sudden whimsy or a summer haze
            As the culmination of bureaucracy –
            Left right, left right, left right
            Forward march –
            If you’re so inclined
 
            Unless perhaps you chance to hear
            Caruso on a gramophone
            And grow suspicious of the virtues of division,
            However fine


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            Emanuel E. García, Leaf Thoughts, One Hundred Poems2013

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