Keep holding

Your call is important to us.

That is why, although we are not now answering,

we will, as soon as possible, answer,

provided you keep holding.

If you do not keep holding,

we assue you

we will not answer

—from Philip Dacey's "Recorded Message" (in The Deathbed Playboy)

Crumbs!

Taking a break from work, for example,
to worry about losing my job,
I ponder why one uses the figure

of a dog thrown a crumb from the table—
what dog relishes a crumb?

—From "On Being Philosophical," by Don Share (in Jacket)

Letter from Siberia

I can't put Siberia down
but can't keep holding onto it.
—Anne Boyer, "The Romance of Happy Workers"

Haiku tunnel

He writes haiku about emails without making you think he's being anachronistic: "In that otherworld/ Where we met when we emailed/ There is no other."—Telegraph, on poet Robert Crawford