System Freeze / by Brian Kunde

System Freeze
by Brian Kunde

I think no frost could be so cold
As that felt in a system freeze:
No doom was e’er so loudly tolled
As death by Terminal disease.

We inputters are flipping out
Till this predicament abates.
We have no work to be about,
Unless the system operates.

We wait until we’ve reached the stage
Where wilder folk become berserks:
Before it’s up, we’re sunk in age,
And can’t remember how it works.

Yet winter passes on: with spring,
Computers spring up green once more.
But input quick, lest in the wing
Another outage lie in store.

* * * * *

System Freeze

from Bibliotec(hnic)a : Poems, Sep. 24, 2013.
An earlier version appeared in
SUL News Notes, v. 2, no. 3, Jan. 22, 1993,
as “NOTIS Freeze.”

1st web edition posted 5/15/2014.