National Adult Literacy Database

March 23, 1998

This week, we have a poem written by Susan Barry, from Hamilton, Ontario. Susan was born in Hamilton on January 25, 1947 at the Henderson Hospital. The night she was born, it was snowing very hard and it was so deep that a policeman carried her mother into the hospital. You might say she was born in the "hands of the law". Jumping right ahead into adolescence, her memories are of being picked up by an elephant at a circus when she was four years old. It is something she will always remember. As an adult, she has always loved theatre, movies, books, and poetry. Her hobbies are poetry, oil painting, knitting and crocheting.

The Computer Brain

by Susan Barry

Computers are very much like the human brain
Its program is packaged within,
While information is read and stored
So does the computer when entering into the right menu,
To think what you are saying
Already the thoughts are there,
We are taught to run the computer by a teacher
With experience, words and hands on we work,
Lesson after lesson
Down the computer trail of keys we go,
Hi Ho! Hi Ho!
Merrily along we go,
DELETE here or ESCAPE there
Into the future
Where no one fears to go
DOS we forget to save
Then we say oh no!

[This poem was taken with permission, from Newsline, the newsletter of the Adult Basic Education Association of Hamilton-Wentworth, September 1997.]