Cold, Dark, Clear

They say that millennials spend, on average, three-and-a-half hours a day on their phones. They watch movies, kibitz on social media, shop, research, text, even make phone calls once in awhile. I watch them as I stumble around campus in my late-life astonishment at how things have changed. I have an ambivalent relationship with my own phone. It's an elegant little thing that is capable of far more than I will ever want it to do. It has a life of its own, though, and has been taken over by advertising and commercials. That aspect of it I do not appreciate. When I try to search for something, it switches out my search for an ad. Ugh! Corporate blather insinuates itself into every crack it can break open in the scramble for eyes to watch and ears to listen. I silence the phone and put it in my jacket pocket. There are stars out tonight, meteors too. It is dry, too dry, and the air is rich with hunger for someone to pay attention to the songs of coyotes, the desire of wild things to survive another night.