Rapid fire thumbs

tap, tap, tap.

 

Plastic amulets

search far away portals.

 

Tap to a slower time.

Tom Thumb was

swallowed by a cow.

 

Tap to find him

prance and joust

on the palm of a maid.

 

Tap, tap, tap

a digital dance.

 

Tap everything

anything and nothing.

 

Tips of tongues

yield to

tips of thumbs.

 

Tap drunkenly

into kegs

of knowledge.

 

Tap trivialities’ pipeline

away from boredom.

 

Tap pathways to travel.

 

Tap where you shouldn’t.

Tap where you have to.

Tap what eludes you.

Tap your addiction.

 

There was a slower time…

of Thumbelina in a

walnut shell cradle.

 

See her fend off

toads and moles

and drift on lily pads

 

find the

Flower Fairy Prince

with help from a swallow.

 

Tap as P.T. Barnum transforms

Charles Sherwood Stratton

into General Tom Thumb

a tiny object of fascination

like an iPhone app.

 

Tap to find

The Tom Thumb

our first steam locomotive

lonely as it lumbers slowly.

 

A harbinger,

its smoke blows dark clouds

onto fairy tales and circuses

of not knowing.

 

See it

creep out of

a world where

snail-mail was fast,

 

towards

flashing thumbs

on tech beehives

of lost innocence

and mystery.

​

***

​

The Tom Thumb

became a bullet train.

 

But perhaps racing thumbs

can become Dutch Boys

and hold back floods

 

of knowing anything,

being lost in everything.

 

The water

is ready to burst.

 

Old fashioned

now defined by weeks.

 

But something is lost…

 

and maybe someday

ol’ Tom Thumb

will race past bullet trains

 

and we will slowly say

Each peach pear plumb

I spy Tom Thumb.