First and Last

Kitten watches the ice cube dissolve

Swallowed by the surrounding water

of his steel saucer

He sees

the skeletal crystal shell

carve its clockwise course

and spiral from the center out

to the edges.

He stares, fixates

as the tiny frozen sliver clings to the side of his dish for

that final second when

the last remnants of its cloudy matrix disappear into nothingness

His hollow eyes search inquisitively for the substance of 

what once was.

I share his first experience with endings.

Why I Said "No" to Buying a Blackberry

"In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction."- Ray Bradbury, 1960

Is it too late for me to back-paddle?