from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Commentary Section

By Deb Burnham

January 2, 2002

When e-mail and cups are historical artifacts

In the city where too much fills
cabs, boutiques, ballparks, there's a new
surplus: too many things to save
from shrines erected for September's
dead. How to preserve globbed candle
wax, trampled blooms

And the e-mails, thousands: I / might
Can't / always / Please / Everything will / Don't
stacked on servers. They'll be saved. So
will the coffee cups, cracks and seams
grayed by concrete, ash

And the window blind, looped around
a churchyard tree, frail slats bent, thrust
around each other like a ruined
helix, strands no longer passing
light or information

Deborah Burnham is the Director of Writing Across the University at Penn, and a long-time resident of Powelton Village.