My sisters and I were raised on Saturday morning cartoons. We’d gobble down our Cheerios and then rush the door to play all day, the great outdoors a much safer environment. In any case, we loved Bugs Bunny, Rocky & Bullwinkle and The Jetsons, fascinated by their house in the sky and flying cars. Little did I know that some day-the early 90s- I would found the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre and use videophones to facilitate Telepoetics link-ups, connecting poets and audiences across vast distances, crude technology, or “new media” back then.

Saturday morning cartoons were more than a source of entertainment; they offered a glimpse into the imaginations of their creators and helped to ignite my own.

As this poem posits, Hanna-Barbera got a few things right.

TOON FUTURE

My mother related to Rosey the Robot maid,
Jane Jetson nothing like my mother.
My mother worked. Jane didn’t have to
because Hanna-Barbera supposed everyone
would live in leisure,
freed from toil’s chains by technology.

Though Hanna-Barbera couldn’t imagine
the Internet, AI, driverless cars,
the almighty algorithm
or a world nearly void of cigarettes
we live with video calls, 3-D printers, smart
watches, space tourism and 24-hr surveillance.

I suspect our infatuation with devices
was stoked by the Jetsons’ allure.
My loquacious mother
would have adored a mobile phone.

She knew nothing of ethics
or the moral dilemma
of ‘plagiarism software’ and search engines,
did not consider that perhaps Jane,
George, Judy, Elroy and Astro
dwelt high in a celestial sphere
because by 2062 the earth’s crust
could be uninhabitable.

The eager reader, budding naturalist
within me always worried about such things.
My mother, embroiled in sexual intrigue
and earning a living,
never looked past Saturday morning
or fretted about the future.
She lived in the present
as I pondered a world
where technology’s promise
masks its price.