Long Line. A Poem by M. A. Schaffner

within homes and shopping centers basking

in the artificial light and the sounds

we now spend half our lives in programming.
 
 
Call it a form of worship in which faith

awaits succeeding images on screens

displaying visions of a promised land presumed

to lie beyond the imagined lottery.
 
 
Except we know we deserve the numbers

by right of having dreamed them — like Heaven

for the true believer, who also sins

if only just to prove he doesn’t always.
 
 
Inside the car no natural sounds impose

but signs remind us the images are real,

though not always as compelling as the game