It's hard to write a poem, a play, a situation comedy, or a
contemporary movie screenplay today without including a cell phone. Face-to-face conversation, even for caregivers with patients, has a whole new set of distractions. In person encounters now require that we compete with not only cell phones but texting, instant messaging and the incessant noise of others doing the same at nearby chairs and tables. How are we to sustain presence in the presence of such clatter?
Knowing of my concern over this my longtime friend, Emily Fluhrer, who lives in Greenville, South Carolina, sent me this poem which I pass on to you.
Bridal Shower
Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the
four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in
my favorite café.
And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is
watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends
or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.
And, like me, he misses the
old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when
being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could
take a pill for.
I liked it
when people who were talking to
themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You
respected people like that.
You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to
kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who
has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal
shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.
O person
like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss
this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell
phone,
after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and
talk to each other,
face to face.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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