The Nature Channel Poem by Paul Kesler

Welcome - -
You have entered
The Nature Channel.

You have escaped
the Concrete Jungle
and are now in
Virtual Country.

Here lie trees
and heather-paved lands,
blown tranquilly over the precipice
of a childhood past,
which strife had banished forever.

Bargains, bargains,
too many to count!

Our virtual pines are but
two bits an hour.

A mere two bits
brings
5 minutes of trees
on your private screen
(and just 10 cents more
gives you wind
blowing through them!) .

Look, if you will,
at the box marked 'Clouds'.
Cumulus, cirrus-
we have 'em all! !

Just 4 bits an hour
(and 10 cents more gives you
wind blowing through them!)

Click the third box over
and pastures loom up on
the sea of your set,
green with grass or yellow with
flowers,

you choose the colors
(just 50 cents more!)

You have entered
The Nature Channel,
a place to escape the
concrete sky,
the blare of asphalt - -
the shout and the clamor
of metal and glass.

Here we have
a neon bath
that out-flanks any native spring,
a pixeled swirl of light and sound;

here lie rivers you left behind
in a lovelorn youth.

Here the thunder,
there the lightning
wishboning out of despair,
the words with which you crouched and prayed
a million nights ago.

Deaths of dawn,
and births of dusk,
swans on the lake,
and the beasts in the brake.

Capture it live,
or record it for later,

(when you're lost with your head
in the snows of your bed)

We've got it all
just waiting to happen,
(if you send your credit
when credit is due) .

It's all been sponsored
for days in advance,
so why take the chance?

On days when the city
can't leave you alone,

when you die for relief
from the gloom and the grief

and the sound of a drone
hangs dead on the phone

(It's yours - -
just dollars a day! !)