Ode to the Man at the Terminal
By the humming screen, where soft blue glows,
A withered hand still taps the keys;
His days are numbered by the rows
Of code, and faint, fluorescent breeze.
A servant to the server's call—
Yet in his eyes, where quiet dwells,
The bramble speaks in sweeter spells.
Each morn he mounts his rusted steed,
A cycle old as time and toil,
And winds through lanes where briars feed
On sun-warmed dew and ancient soil.
The blackberries—his yearly gauge—
Return in youth, retreat in age.
He plucks their sweetness once again,
And ponders life's recursive chain.
"Oh fleeting fruit!" he oft exclaims,
"Ye grow and die as thoughts do pass,
Returning under different names,
But mirrored still in selfsame glass.
As I in circuits, caught and spun,
Repeat the task not yet undone,
So do ye rise, and fall, and climb—
Your code is Nature's run-time rhyme."
Oft has he watched, through tinted panes,
The memos bloom, the emails spread—
While colleagues rose like April rains,
Then vanished, whispered, lost, or dead.
Yet he remained, steadfast, unseen,
Like moss upon the fax machine.
His lunch the same, his coat threadbare,
His soul grown quiet in the chair.
And still, each August's solemn turn,
The berry swells with purple pride,
To teach, to mock, or to discern
What dreams lie dormant deep inside.
"O cruel design," he writes one day,
"That men should loop and fade away—
But still within your thorned delight,
I glimpse the Infinite at night."
So now he types, yet less in haste,
His code a kind of prayer or song;
Each line a thread, serene and chaste,
That knows both what is short and long.
No fear of crashes, time, or rust,
For all must digitize to dust—
But he, the watcher of the vine,
Has tasted something nigh divine.
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