Join this Group

Last night I started the process of moving our neighborhood e-Group from Yahoo Groups to Google Groups. This is why:

“Join this Group”

The first commitment is to click “Join This Group”
and so many don’t even do that, perhaps confused
as to whether they must click that button,
or if they do, are they committed to action?
Perhaps they don’t remember that sunny afternoon
near my front gate, chatting about the garden and
the neighborhood, and how much they wanted to be
“in the know” and how that conversation culminated
in their desire to write down their email address on
that small scrap of paper they found in their pocket.
Being ever the optimist, with so little supporting evidence,
I assume they are confused and want to be part of the
neighborhood group, and so I stay up late and make lists
and change groups so that I can just add them to the group
without asking them to reconsider or to even make
such a commitment as to click “Join this Group”.