[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 03:22:33 EST
As one whose husband's pager beeped loudly at 2:30 am Christmas Eve to
drive 30 miles away to take care of a faultly oxygen concentrator which was
emitting a large beep and turned out to be, instead, the couples' smoke
alarm.......
I understand the swatting <g>.Julie Krueger
========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Sunday Poem Date:
11/28/04 1:54:40 AM Central Standard Time From: _ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on:
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
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