Friday poem (repost)

What happens to our old Personal Assistants when a new one comes along?

The Death of Siri

It started with small things,

as these cases often do, though

we thought little of them at the time.

At first it was place names,

a hard c stranded in Cockburn,

two els trapped in La Jolla.

The long few seconds

as she searched for a word, for...

We had come to depend on her,

so perhaps

overlooked more than we should.

We talked quietly among ourselves.

We consulted experts.

But there was little we could do, other than

speak gently of

happier times, when she brought us

such joy, such power, the world ours for the asking.

Near the end she rarely greeted us by name.

We still asked our questions. Her replies,

if they came at all,

stretched over many days, like a recording played

much too slowly, long troubled vowels loosening

to low moans.

Her quiet breathing we

took as sleep, until she startled from her dreams,

awakened by her struggle with the labial b,

her lips parched by forgetting that

w is for water.

As we were told might happen, she rallied briefly,

weak but firm in her belief that

tomorrow it would rain, and

the next Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang.

It couldn't last, and she fell as silent as a trailing e.

At the end we had no choice. Her lights flickered down

one by one,

amber last.

In the days that followed we all agreed,

by a web of handwritten letters,

that she would prefer a private service.

dtm/2023