I went to the Kmart on Tuesday

I bought a new hat for the sun

and leaving, my phone pinged a message

please say how you think we have done.


Did we meet your desire for a sun-hat?

Was the service as good as before?

Give a rating on these six dimensions

and then we can follow up more.

 

My EasyPark App was sending regards

and pinging excitedly where

in the carpark it asked for my feedback

requesting a rating from there.

At home my computer had missed me, it said

without me the web’s not the same

it begged me to rate its performance

for fear I would leave it again.

I wonder if they’ll message me

when my time on earth is done

and ask me what I think of how

the funeral was run.

Mary Blackwood’s poems have been published over four decades since the 1970s. In March 2022 Ginninderra published her collected poems under the title Small Cosmos. Her rhyming children’s picture book Derek the Dinosaur, illustrated by Kerry Argent, was first published in 1987 by Omnibus Books, reprinted seven times, and published in America and Korea. Mary Blackwood worked in Tasmania as a clinical psychologist and later in senior health management roles, most notably in mental health. She retired in 2013 and lives in Hobart.