Pilgrims

I wish we were pilgrims again.
I wish the world was new again.
When the sight of rows of corn elicited excitement.
When they built campfires just for the pleasure of it.
When they didn't have to post about it to make it worthwhile
When they didn't have to like anything or hash tag it.
When life was only for the present.
And the simplest things transcendent.

I wish we were pilgrims again.
When they told ghost stories around a campfire
With only their imaginations to give them shape.
No special effects. No car crashes with daring escapes.
I wish the world was new again.
When they wrote letters and then had to wait.
Anticipation is lost today.

Now life is immediate.
Now everything is referenced.
Now we have no direction.
And we have to enshrine
All that is benign.
Now we catalog it for all to see.
From our shits to our appendectomy.

Sorry if I am cynical.
But life is so clinical.
We are detached from our own experience.
We have to like it to give it credence.
It's all so self-referential.
Including my own musings.
An irony not of my choosing.
I don't mean to be heavy-handed.
But that's what the words commanded.

I think I'm from another time.
Where poetry still had to rhyme.
When there was no mountain we couldn't climb.
And we still thought sunsets were sublime.
Where life was simple and pleasures few.
But there's one thing that I know is true.
Though this world is modern, it is far from new.