Ephemeral English

Technology is a vocab thief;
a patois of purloined phrases
Aged terms since civilly borrowed
have not regained their places.

Once birds did tweet, cookies were sweet,
and troll ‘neath bridge did dwell,
Streams were for water, bytes for fodder,
and illnesses spread Viral.

With Clouds in the sky and spam in the can,
our catfish swam in rivers.
A friend was close, we booted for snow,
and restaurants had servers.

A bug with no legs, nor tree verdant leaves,
and the superhighway runs on busses? What?
Virtual is unreal, and intelligence artificial,
and while logging now, no buzzsaw buzzes.

We text with our thumbs and tag with a mouse,
and swipe a page here to elsewhere;
we pin without pricking, and browse while reclining,
and “my Word” is now just software.

Via on-ramps we’re on-line as we download the low-down,
so ‘cross continents Christian can mingle
our beloved OED grows more portly each day
as tech-savvyness makes us bilingual