save us from auto-correct!

 beware slipping into the ruts

I like spellcheck,

for it signals me if it doesn't recognize

the rightness of the letters I've typed

to represent a real word,

though I have my idiosyncrasies,

which can challenge its suggestions,

I prefer "gray" to "grey",

and sometimes I want to stretch the language

and make a new word real,

"riskifying" for effect,

when spellcheck morphs into auto-correct,

I am annoyed with the attempted insertion

of what it "thinks" experience should tell me

of how opening letters most often lead into certain words,

of how opening words most often lead into certain phrases,

encouraging me to take the road already taken,

the tried is maybe true,

but the tried may also be trite, redundant,

beneath what I should attempt,

wheels of thought safely contained

in the ruts of what has come before,

we are even more challenged by A.I.,

for it can take huge amounts of input not from us

and fashion clarity by repeating what others thought on the page,

just mixing it all up with the semblance of something new,

how can we find ways forward

that are actually from our own inner unique creator

when it is so easy to give up agency

to the consensus of a program that isn't us?

no matter how fancy it's packaged,

it's still canned,

I fear the servant who can make us lose our edge

and allow the ruts to claim us

within the roads already taken.

by Henry H. Walker

August 27, ‘26