Don't Get the Fax Machine

What is this Generation Gap

but a simple Leap of Faith?

You know how it goes,

these things sometimes skip,

trip and blunder our brains.

The Concept of Change

is quite strange

after all

it’s hard to understand

thingy-majigs, do-hickeys,

tech-no-ology and such.

Magically transforming words into air

or so, that's what my grandfather thought…

Is that what He is supposed to Believe?

That this mail comes through the trees?

Telephone poles and wires really-

not the pigeon type of messenger birds, silly!

This fancy fandangle thing,

that like a phone will ring-

it is called a ‘facsimile machine’.

Didn't Graham Bell teach you anything?!

It answers without words, taking pixelated note;

thinking, churning-you mean pictures now float?

They're all just dots

like coded language, recorded spots

(and although I continued to try to explain

stretching this bridge-span causes great pain.

And since my message would not go through

I tried an older language he maybe knew)

Ignoti mulla cupido*

Beati pauperes spiritu**

Deus ex machina?!***

Major e longinquo reverential****

I’ll not forget the Father that was Grand

as Father time keeps waving his hand.

I carried your weight in Irons and Wood.

You always knew I would turn out Good.

The genes you left me were of durable supply,

Even still after all these working years gone by

I still try to understand you the best I can-

what it was being a heroic and honest man

who marvels at the little things

like why the fax machine rings

if you’re not supposed to Answer it?

It is a perplexing device, I admit.

In Latin:

* The unknown does not tempt

**Lucky are those of a poor mind

***God out of machine

****Viewed from a distance, everything is beautiful

*Latin:The unknown does not tempt
**Lucky are those of a poor mind
***God out of machine
****Viewed from a distance, everything is beautiful



Image credit:By Quadissimus (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons