The Tender (a poem)


Felippe en Distel

Our Signaleers are pilots of many talents and some, while wiling away the hours deep in Anoikis, turn to verse. Felippe en Distel is one such Signaleer who has captured the life of the rescue cache tender:

The Tender

She drops a bookmark, warping off
the entrance hole; though she would scoff
at evermore returning there:
to retend caches lent her care?
No, onward she will surely go
To scan and map, to tend and sow,
And drive on into systems deep,
Forgetting food and drink and sleep.

To seek this cache, she bounces thrice,
Through planet’s sash of rock and ice,
And there and back again she’ll go,
’til canister on grid shall show.
That beacon (casting pilots’ fears
of losing probes and, stranded here,
be forced to self-destruct their pod,
their evening’s ratting gone to sod,
away) be now in sight, so near
To our intrepid Signaleer!

A warp, a check of d-scan quick,
A copy/paste of password, click,
Reveal a set of probes (expected),
Launcher mod; the goods inspected,
something’s missing… yes, a hug!
She taps her hold and drops a jug
of spirits into wanting can,
‘fore dropping her own probes to scan.

Red to green, her sigs progress,
with sharper signal, probe size less.
And noting wormhole type and class
of system, in this final pass,
She settles on an exit hole,
And splashes, reigniting soul
When Allison’s kind words implore
To tend again, to sow once more.

  • Fellipe en Distel

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