Two Servers, One Human Poem by Donal Mahoney

Henry Deck gets up at three
to double-check the facts in
a long presentation written

days and nights this weekend.
Coffee in hand, he stumbles
to the computer, hits the button,

the screen lights up and he expects
the Google genie to appear but
sees instead this blaring message:

“You are not connected to this server! ”
as though the missing genie is his fault
at 3 a.m. and not the server’s.

It wasn’t the server's fault either
when he took his wife to dinner and his
waving never connected with their server,

a Hercule Poirot who strolled to other tables,
uncorking fine wines and offering whiffs to folks
more hoity-toity than Henry Deck and his wife.

On the bill Henry saw a message presaging
the one on his computer screen this morning:
gratuity added despite another failure to connect.