'We need to feel the warmth of shaken hand! Devices help, but lack the twinkling eye, such wealth!' Photo: by Mark Timberlake on Unsplash
A modern Meeting
Poem by Howard W Hilton in memoriam Geoffrey Weeden
Switch on the Zoom, and enter these, our homes,
Our little fancies all revealed,
The pictures on the wall, the tired or tended plants,
Our tastes in texture, colour, unconcealed.
And so with us, assembled for this hour,
Some Friends unmoving, settled blocks of stone,
Some all a-fidget, seeming never still,
Yet all are centred, joined and not alone.
But then the silence breaks, a voice invites,
The children tell us they have made some bread,
A Friend reports another’s recent fall.
Greetings from WHERE? Lo, space has fled!
It is not so. These tiny pictures on a tiny screen
Are but the images of life – not life itself;
We need to feel the warmth of shaken hand!
Devices help, but lack the twinkling eye, such wealth!
