Threnody For Claris Macintosh Poem by Richard George

My confidante is dying,
my memory of ten years:
she has only a week to live
and her software is obsolete
as 78 to MiniDisc.

Dusk. All this long,
ashen summer solstice I've been
pulling my whole corpus
from her chill conflagration,
thanking the Lord for papyrus:

print-out. Relief
is a gall-and-honey torture,
averted calamity.
I carry
her bier up to the attic.

My fine Scottish secretary,
cursor failing.
What would I have done.
Prayers well in my eyes
for indispensable women.