Thursday, September 08, 2005

Techie at an Airport writing this Poem

Baby Eyes

I did not see you standing there
still and quiet as a bronze soldier
beneath the folding of the papers
and the mumbled chorus of strangers

The cuffs of long pants whispering by
Leather and silicon in every hand
Worry, the only mask worn here
Where only faces of time are seen

Silence grabs me like gravity
As if you have dug a well of still
In this land of the moving lifeless
Where nervous men wait for wings

You are so out of place, little girl,
I remember thinking as I looked down
to see you staring up at me
with eyes that asked no questions

I resumed my reading, or my talking,
or whatever it is that wingless men do
when they are in between here and there,
not knowing that your stare was for me

But there you stayed, still as a stone
with eyes as soft as children's hands.
Startled, I looked around for your parents
For children should not be left alone.

No one came to claim you,
No one even seemed worried,
And least of all you,
little girl with soft eyes ..

Soft eyes as deep as depthless chasms,
wide as the breadth of grand canyons
and trusting as playful puppies,
eyes that bring me back ..

I know these eyes! Whose eyes are these?
I have seen you before
In someone else's eyes,
At someone else's time

Where is she, your mother?
Is she here? She must be,
for you are surely she
and your eyes cannot deny it.

Your gaze never travels, never moves.
Why do you stare at me?
What is it about me,
that you have never seen before?

.. never seen before ..

And then I know
Why I have never seen you before -
My breath is gone
And I do not know if you are real

It hits with the weight of the universe
of a billion suns created from nothing,
the weight of words that spun the worlds from dust,
the weight of losing one's own child

Slow realization creeps over me
that I will never see you again -
This my only chance to see
Those beautiful eyes, those beautiful eyes.
- Cameron Purdy
___________________________

For those in the know, Cameron Purdy has a decent technical reputation among the server side engineers. I thought that was very well written from a guy who thinks about cache coherence on middleware systems.