Global Solutions Architect

by Rose Kelleher

Responsible for overall design
of large, complex solutions
including, but not limited to, the network
of winter branches

and all the systems that connect to it
by various protocols:
claw, paw, photon-to-retina, rain

and all the other networks that those systems
connect to: roots, veins, tides, highways, families,

the worldwide webs of kissing, pollen transfer,
English, Swahili, German, German Shepherd,
twitter, tweet, ka-ching, saxophone, synapse,

tectonic plates and all their interfaces,
all seven shark and fish repositories,

all the power sources, and all the power
that binds neutrons to protons, wings to pigs,
earth to the moon, and moon to spoon and croon,

the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,
while in the background processing those tasks
the Architect has scheduled: shadow-lengthening,
contempt-breeding, wound-healing,
and interstellar dust-to-dust translation,

legacy systems accessible only via
low-level languages such as C, Assembler,
Anglo-Saxon, clicks and grunts, old bones
containing DNA code that still listens
on hidden ports

transmitting signals through a buried cable,
a multiplex of wingbeat,
heartbeat, feast and famine, night and day,
breathe in, out, iambic ones and zeros
thrumming down the line from time to time

from peeling off an enemy soldier's skin
and dancing in it
to patching ourselves up with embryos

then back again, through all lifecycle phases
including the Big Bang—the second one—
and darkness on the waters

and in between, again the winter branches
of overlapping treetops, bending light
that recreates their image in a window
through which a cat, who’s sitting on a desk,
stares, while a computer on that desk

displays these words onscreen, quite possibly
to the amusement of some engineer
who chuckles softly, sending a vibration
that fails to alter history the way
a butterfly-wing would, or so they say.