Ted Lord
In
Time
We've come to realize non-simultaneous
communications can be more effective than
communication as we originally knew it.
--Robert A. Ratliffe, Vice-President
McCaw Cellular Communications
My socks and briefs
are giving up the ghost
every day
yet I only notice
the holes where they've gone
seamless, unrelenting, expanding
while I'm crossing off things
in my day-timer. To think
we now prefer to talk
at someone in their machine
or flame responses
on an e-mail screen--
it's no wonder I haven't
noticed the holes in my underthings
when so much of me is virtual
or reduced to half-hour increments.
Remember to block out time just to think
the facilitators say
as if time could be managed,
as if time were the reason
corporate America isn't meeting
face-to-face anymore. My socks
don't lie: holy, sweaty, animal
they let my know in time I'm alive.
Copyright 1996, Ted Lord
Ted Lord is executive director of the Pride Foundation, which funds lesbian and
gay organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest. His poems have appeared
most recently in Kansas Quarterly, Nimrod, Sycamore Review, and
Wisconsin
Review.