{Holograms and oracles; separate times, same structure}

Slippity tippity toe-scraping up the trunk,
hands finding owls’ hollows, no hoots,
just a dark eye staring at nothing at all.
They hung a God here, didn’t you hear?
They say he lived but lost most of his power;
you ever hear a sadder story than that?

                   {A cell-phone capturing a photo of an ash tree}

The insects buzz weird here, kinda metallic,
like little dust-mote-sized robots hanging
in the air like a million shards of that God;
but that’s silly, I mean, come on,
7th-century nanorobots?, and what’s a robot?
That’s not one of our words but are ours ours?

                                                               {Chewing}

Sweepy-sliding all the way to a heavy root,
and all suddenly so very very misty,
like a dragon with a tobacco addiction,
but we don’t know what tobacco is either,
it hasn’t been brought over from the New World,
wherever that is, and besides, no Boncalo yet,
another few centuries, another few plagues.

       {And the world is destroyed, and they had not a clue}
                                       {Such a shame}