Steam in the tank, power to push, pull, turn, compress, and flow.
A measuring device conmected to the tank, unfamiliar to me, I study the manual.
Nothing relevant in here… only engineering specs. I realize, reassuring me why I get paid.
It is up to me to understand how the symbols, dials, bellows and springs make this device speak coherently to a control operator.
I imagine him now, sitting at his console, waiting for the Great Machine to tell him what he needs to know, without actually knowing.
My new friend, the instrument I am going to work on, is perhaps much like a wild beast that was once domesticated, but has gone rogue-robot and deviated from the language it once spoke with another long before me.
Its manual is old text-written, revealing the age of its creation to a time long before computers were mainstream.
The mechanical creature is lost and needs only an adjustment or two. I manuever with my intuition, remembering the ancient ways I have studied in 1980’s pneumatic to analog technology.
The wild machine is tame once again, for now. Speaking old with new, we are connected once more.
The control operator is pleased with his console, he tells me. Our work here is done.
The wild steam is no longer a threat, and the beast within the Great Machine is soothed from its restless stirrings and sleeps again.
I walk away from the slumbering monsters, and return to my station. My wizardly supplies back to where it belongs.
Without my knowledge in the ancient ways of pneumatic level transmitters, this land would be in chaos.
Poetry Sucks 