All The Lonely People?

If anyone tried to write
another 'Eleanor Rigby'
they simply could not, the song
would come out all wrong.

However good the tune
and tight the arrangement, 
the song could never strike the note
of near universal recognition
that the original found in it's time.

Since that song was written
loneliness has been moved on.
It has been crowded out
by websites like the one
that you are reading this on
where we are in it together,
even as each of us is alone.

Our loneliness becomes our vocation
fit to be shared with the nations
of likeminded absent souls.

Mordant Danish humourist Victor Borge
used to say about the effect of his performances
'The shortest distance between two people is a smile'.

Now people don't meet, and have little to say
when they pass each other in the street.
The shortest distance between two people
is from your screen and keyboard to mine,
something I sit down at home and wait for.