[lit-ideas] SV: lit-ideas Digest V1 #4
- From: Torgeir Fjeld <torgfje2@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:41:59 +0100 (CET)
Carryon.
-tor
> Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 23:51:01 -0800
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Sunday Poem
> From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Alarms, Diversions
>
> Usually, at that time of night, it's the fire alarm alerting,
> with characteristic chirrup,
> demanding that its twelve volt battery be changed.
> Last time it was the highest one,
> which required a twelve foot ladder.
> This time, however, though I went
> from device to device--
> code now requires alarms to cluster like mussels on ceilings--
> the noise persisted.
> But sounding only once every seven minutes.
> I'd think I'd finally fixed the bugger, done the right battery-ectomy.
> I'd climb back into bed, settle down, breathe deeply, thank goodness for
> fresh silence and then...and then...
> cheep...seven minutes's pause...cheep.
>
> It's an inquiring kind of a noise.
> A "why-haven't-you-figured-out-what-I-want?" kind of a noise.
> Like a puppy wondering if now would be a good time to go outside.
> Like the last cricket of the season, asking where his chums have gone.
> Like a poltergeist with a particularly thin sense of wit.
> After a couple of hours I had disabled almost all the alarms we own.
> But cheep, pause, then repeat. Cheep, pause, repeat, nigh unto dawn.
> I walked every inch of the house looking for smoke,
> and then, one stage more demented,
> I searched for some less sound illusion source,
> a mirror,
> elf resistance cells,
> freedom fighters from Mars, bent on testing my breeding potential,
> Busby Berkeley bears with rolled brollies and city bowler hats,
> dancing on the stairs like cabaret stars,
> applauding with tittering squeaks at the end of each seven minute number.
>
> By chance I finally passed the right spot at exactly the moment when a new
> chirrup was birthed.
> I learned that my wife's new pager mimics the fire alarm's flat battery
> plaint.
> Knowledge, they say, is power.
> With swiftness and dexterity that would have made a chicken sexer proud,
> I whipped that black beast's AA vitals out,
> and, finally, gratefully, no more than a mendicant in pajamas,
> dropped towards the sweet vale of hush.
>
> David Ritchie
> Portland, Oregon
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] SV: lit-ideas Digest V1 #4
