Collectively

People walk before city shops 
Bus stops, aprons to alleyways

Heads down

Thumbs blurring

Above digital letters

On bright screens.

They

Collectively

Have no expressions

They, collectively

Have no visible emotion.

I lean against the brick front

Of a shoe store.

At the counter a woman taps a tablet.

A co-worker pauses in the doorway

To the back room

Bent over a device.

They

Collectively

Attend to business elsewhere

It having nothing to do

With shoes.

Traffic stops at the corner.

A teen driver in a new Ford

Brakes hard

Retrieving her cell phone

Upon which she quickly taps

A message

Exactly like the approaching bus

In which passengers

Collectively

Do the same.

Across the boulevard

Pedestrians mimic the actions 

Of others

Afflicted with the same virus.

They

Collectively

Submerge themselves in

Digital dialogues

The whole of which

Are shallow and meaningless.

Thousands

Millions of tap-tap-taps

All furious

Collectively

Vacuous.

Information is making us stupid

Rather than intelligent.

We

Collectively

Have turned our thumbs

Into the principal instrument

Of inquiry

Into a world meant for immersion

In things

Other than digital.

We are digging our graves with our thumbs.