AMBIVALENT TECHNOLOGY

One way, my iPhone’s an umbilical,
A lifeline feeding me a nutrient stream
Of vital information, yet its pull
Is like a leash—I’m tethered to its beam.

Sometimes I crave the liberty to dream,
Detached from here-and-now immediacy,

For then not fact but fancy rules supreme:
Imagination trumps reality.

At such times no advanced technology
Can offer what imagination may,
And its imperative is to be free
From nets and links and tethers, and to play.

Though signals from without keep me in touch,
Imagination shuns cold data’s clutch.

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