Sometimes one needs to look away

Sometimes one needs to look away from the digital devices, away from the strobing, pulsating L.E.D.s and L.C.D.s, peer through the air into real streets and real trees, listen to real sounds and real cricket noises.

From the bars on this last evening of the weekend come yells, screams, and cheers, the cries of freedom railing against the dawn of Monday.

Nobody looks up. Nobody peers into the sky, except for the cosmologists, and even they have stopped looking. Nobody looks for the stars, for there are no stars to be seen, and the moon is obscured by the trees.

A crack in the sidewalk, a fissure, a gulf, darting of the eyes, words whispered in a foreign tongue, the buzzing of a moped, the smooth gliding of airplane lights across the night sky - these all say, Be safe,

Be safe.