Overtime

You almost wouldn’t see him there,
bent as he is to his gray screen
in his gray office, gray hair.
No cloak cowls the bony mien,

spine a scythe, saint slim,
he sits in the chill, Hertzian hum
mousing scrim after scrim
from screen to ether. Humdrum.

At his back, beyond his blinds,
his half-acre of smoked pane,
even the confirmed grinds
douse their lights, catch a train,

but the lord of the graveyard shift
is too preoccupied to look:
he’s locked to his phosphors, ten swift
digits ticking his power book,

dividing a twinned infinity of thens
by the absolute value of now,
scrolling an endless skein of whens
past his pale, translucent brow.