Member-only story
Power Down!
After Poe’s “The Raven.” I will learn how to turn off the phone
After “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
The quaint and curious buttons I’d forgotten on my phone—
While I nodded, nearly napping, I essayed to try a tapping,
As if I were gently rapping, rapping at my power button.
“Let this be right,” I muttered, “tapping at my power button—
Only this and nothing more.”
Indistinctly I did whistle while thumb-typing an epistle
And each separate glowing pixel smiled like a cheerful ghost.
Eagerly I wished the morrow—vainly I had tried to borrow
Ways to Candy Crush my sorrow—drat that forgotten button—
Drat the rare and radiant button whom the angels once named “off” —
Nameless here all of a sudden.
I’m not a teenager any longer, but my skills were feeling stronger.
“Sir,” voiced I, “or Madam, robot heart I do implore—
Fact is, I was napping, and so gently tried I rapping,
And so faintly tried I tapping, tapping at my power button,
That I scarce was sure you heard me”—here I flicked the useless button—
Brightness still and nothing more.
Deep into that brightness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal dared to dream before—
But the ringing was unbroken, and the brightness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Bixby?”
This I tried pronouncing, but the app corrected: “Nope!”
Merely this, and no more hope.
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
Up here popped a stately Bixby of the saintly days of yore—
Not the least obeisance made he—not a minute stopped or stayed he—
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched next to my power button—
Perched inside a pop-up window just…
