Meditations on the Typewriter

  Like some ancient creature that does not know it
is long extinct, the typewriter plods along.  Once
 the cutting edge of technology, the MacBook Pro of
 some past age, it stands now only as a curiosity -
 a relic of forgotten years.

 Yet, when animated by human flesh and muscle, the
keys still miraculously snap shapes on to blank pages -
Preserving thought and idea for some future mind not
yet born to read and ponder.

 All the trinkets of the now, with their bright pro-
mise of a better world, have not deepened the mind or
 made tender the human heart… although now our rage
and violence can be communicated at light speed to
 thousands of others who live vicariously through light
emitting diodes.

 But still, somewhere, hands guide ink over paper or
push keys that force metal forms over inky ribbons.  Words,
at times, need to be slowed . . . backspaced . . .
 corrected . . . easing out in a trickle, not a flood.

Slow us down, O Lord.  To write and read and live deeply
may be better than to live quickly.  Too many words may
 be worse than none at all.

 May the value of words not be measured by volume, but
 by their depth.

-Tom Lawson