By Ralph Earle
My job is to translate
dry and unrelenting code
into a user interface of surpassing beauty.
With my mouse, I roll one pixel after another
up the vast anthill of the internet.
My dream is to translate
the visions of the holy ones
into a communication protocol
of universal wonderment.
I want to launch shreds of light into the air
to fall like a layer of diamonds
on the endless mountains of the Web.
Don’t imagine these dreams are limited
by the LANs of the software lab.
Between here and the ultimate
unlimited interface of my aspirations
lives a dazzling darkness,
wide as the universe and thin as a hair.
After retiring from IBM as a senior software engineer in 2017, Ralph Earle has published two poetry collections. Earle joined the IBM Software Lab in Raleigh, N.C., in 1990 as a technical editor and retired as a senior software engineer after a long and distinguished career in the technology sector.
While at IBM, he coauthored Enterprise Computing with Objects: From Client/Server Environments to the Internet for Addison-Wesley’s Bloch-Jacobson-Rumbaugh Object Technology Series. He also published numerous articles in prominent technical journals, including IEEE Computer Magazine, IBM Systems Journal, Distributed Computing, Management Directions, and Object Magazine.
In retirement, Earle has successfully transitioned into a second career as an accomplished poet. His published poetry collections include Everything You Love Is New, released by Redhawk Publications in 2024, and The Way the Rain Works, published by Sable Books in 2015. His lyrical work has earned him widespread recognition, including three nominations for the Pushcart Prize.
Beyond his own writing, Earle remains deeply active in the literary community, comanaging a monthly poetry series at an independent bookstore in Chapel Hill, N.C. His poems have appeared across a diverse array of print and online literary outlets, including The Sun, Carolina Quarterly, and Sufi Journal, bridging the rigorous analytical world of software architecture with the expressive depths of contemporary verse.
