Scrolling Sunsets

Scrolling Sunsets

I read Wordsworth in class and then

shamelessly watch sunsets through my

phone,

I search pretentiously in settings for

colours

found in the raw sky alone.

Nature comes to us through glass

rivers flow in HD,

we see so much more of the Earth

yet, there’s this void of intimacy.

Filtered forests of wilderness

create an illusion of proximity,

An Earth, curated for

our unending vanity.

A rainforest in Brazil, a glacier in Iceland

all at the swipe of a finger,

Can emerald landscapes and golden-hour

skies

make genuine feeling linger?

Framed, captioned, shared, consumed

all aestheticized into serenity,

Can the messy, humid, insect-filled truth

find a place in this modernity?

There is something seductive

about this curated earth,

Digital landscapes offer beauty

without the discomfort.

No sweat, no mud,

no slow unfolding of time,

The forest a mere image, the mountain a

backdrop

the ocean, a looped crime.

We learn of wildfires through

breaking news pages,

We witness melting ice caps

in booming virality.

Floods, droughts, cyclones

reach us instantly.

Climate change flickers

across our screens daily.

Sometimes I think of that sunset again

the sky, stretched wide and uncontained,

Perhaps it still awaits

our return for a future sustained.

***