PUTTING DOWN A FRIEND, IN VOWELS

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Not writing to prompt today. No time to figure out the intricacies of a "curtal sonnet". (Think Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins as an example of that). No. Instead, I'm running about the Kootenays, getting ready to leave here Monday as I'm going to the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle next weekend! 

I've been trying to find a printer driver for my trusty little portable Canon IP90 (which, when I think of it, I must have had for more than a decade; I know I had it with me at a 2005 event in Victoria and I got it before that for a Fed. BC Writers' conference/AGM in Prince George, if I remember correctly). No joy. It just won't talk to the current operating system of my Mac and that is that. 

So...

Putting Down a Friend, in Vowels

All your life you talked poetry
       spitting out page after page of crisp black words

Even when you had to, say, print a letter or a photograph
       your head cleaner chatted and whirred and I knew

I could trust you to be up for it
       no task too big or too small

Oh, the times we've had, the trips we've taken, the words we've pondered
       at events I've forgotten the names of, hate to say it but you're
       
Useless now, you refuse to talk to my Mac's OS and I mourn you like an old pet
       who hopefully jumps into the car for that last ride to the vet's

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