The IDS had broken down.
Many of us didn’t know which way
to turn or how to tell someone else
we didn’t know.
In our homes the water runs
constantly. Our eyes cloud.
We put our best men on building a
new system. Some say
they will never be through, that
information has become that dense.
Some say we will have to find other
ways for people to
know people. We wanted to go out-
side but wondered if it
were safe. How could we tell? Some
of us cursed the day we
built the Information Delivery System,
the day it became all inclusive.
Some of us approached others and
stuck them with sharpened sticks.
It was a beginning.
Some of us took those same sticks
and made marks in the sand.
Too close to the waves, flashed in our
brains, a memory perhaps.
We moved away from the water. We
moved closer together.
Soon, the sticks became burdensome.
Some of us thought that without the
sticks we would need a new IDS.
Some of us wanted to wait for that to
happen. Some of us prayed,
O Lord, help us in our whatever this is.
O Lord, give us new information
that we may impart it to others. When we
can, of course, when we figure out how,
O Lord, our most imperative First Cause.