At ten, I whispered into my wristwatch
pretending to be Dick Tracy in the comics.
Who knew at sixty-five I’d talk to my wrist
for real, and be explaining Dick Tracy
to my grandchildren.
If a watch can be a working phone, what else
never before imagined could come to be?
Could we suck the carbon from the air?
Stop a hurricane? Vanquish a forest fire?
It’s no longer science fiction to converse
on a screen with a colleague a continent away.
So is it outrageous to hope that in fifty years
we won’t fear cancer any more
than the common cold?
Dictating to the device on my wrist
I make a list of items now obsolete:
typewriters, phone booths, slide projectors,
and the naive notion that the world
will always stay the same.


Š by Jacqueline Jules.
Used here with the author’s permission.