I asked Siri the other evening if she could write a poem.
“Who, me?” she answered in her dry voice.
“Yes, Siri. Can you write a poem?”
She hesitated, just long enough to load her thoughts,
And as she spun the circle of her meditations,
I recalled how she had shown me the nearest star in our galaxy,
Connected me to the closest coffee shop,
Guided me home from a friend’s house.
Yet now, I watched as her screen puzzled
Over the catalog of responses, the program of poetry
And how exactly to access it
To give me what I needed.
“Sure you can, Siri,
Anybody can write a poem.
They often begin with the simplest of feelings,
Like the surprise of laughter or the sunlight of a single glance.”
But as the cycle of her wondering continued its revolution,
Bearing down on the wifi to find a proper answer,
I told Siri that poetry just has to come from the heart,
And she wept to know what I meant.