Hey, Are Those Your Cameras?

Is that your camera array, America? The one lining both sides of southbound I-35, mile marker 26? The high-tech, speed-calibrated, glare-correcting computer that takes my picture every day as I drive to work?

My neighbor called you, America, to ask about your cameras, because they flash brightly as we drive by at highway speed. The retinal afterimage looks like this:

And I see it, blinking, for miles. You told her that you didn’t know whose cameras those were, and then you told her that, well, you did know, but that you weren’t going to say.

That next shot is me, America, on my way to work.

Do the horse’s feet ever not touch the ground? Did you miss something between the frames?

How can you ever, ever be sure?

Maybe a second array, just north or south of the first, will make us safer.

Can’t you see my love for you in my picture? Why not? Does my brow furrow? Do I wince at the flash?

I could send you a picture now and then, a keepsake photo in a tiny plastic keychain telescope, a shot of me on the beach, playing happily in your sand. When you miss me, you could aim your keys at the sun and look in on me, smiling.

But what do you think you’ll find in the daily snapshot? What brooding dissent, what capricious anger? Don’t forget, America, that what you can’t see matters, too. Haven’t you been busy reminding me what terrors lurk there, in the dark?

Where do you keep your scrapbook, America? The one with all of our thousands of driving-to-work and long-haul snapshots?

You probably can’t see them in the background of my photo, but there are acres and acres and acres of prickly pear down here, you know. For thousands of square miles, prickly pear, highway, train tracks, border patrol, and cameras.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

That's T.S. Eliot, America, and he seems a lot smarter than you, these days.