Cities of Silence

Not ten years after the net took over, 
An awful sound took over the streets of our neighborhood. 
It was the sound of silence, of absent children; 
No more gleeful runts at play, making mischief, 
Slipping down slides or dashing through sprinklers, 
Running around the yards shooting each other with water guns, 
No launchings of wiffle balls off bats into the neighbor's yard, 
No racing down the street after a football was caught, 
No sound of a basketball dancing on the rim, 
No late evening campouts in forts built in trees 
High above fires that waltz through the summer night 
Smelling of marshmallows and bug spray and burnt ash, 
No explorations of the forests between houses,  
Where our most vivid imaginations found important missions, 
Like a soldier's plight in the foliage of some air battle; 
All squandered by an electronic disease, a magnetism that drew them 
Inside, for all times, all those sounds, those footprints lost, 
Forbidden among the suburban waste of the 90s. 
 
O Lord, let my children play, let them run through the wind 
Like we used to, in a century nostalgic for the outdoor sensation, 
The ever familiar music of kids at play, chasing each other 
In luminous joy 'round the weary houses.