Chasing Grace

A poem for a documentary series about women in tech.

ACT 1

In the pages of Admiral Grace Hopper’s logbook,
you can find the remains of a moth, plucked from
the relay of the world’s first computer.

We are the wings of a curious moth. A child’s fingers
dismantling an alarm clock. We are strings of zeros
and ones and what would happen if.

We are a glowing screen in a sleeping house.
The moment we peeked behind the curtain
and found the entire universe, a language
of possible, stunning certainty
in an ocean of chaos.

Sign us up for Captain of What Else.
Engineer of the Unimaginable.

Bring on the gear, the whiteboard,
the endless rowing toward solutions.
We are what it takes to build our next dimension.

Act 2

When Grace Hopper suggested computers
could be programmed using English words,
they told her that was silly,

computers can’t speak English. They speak math.
They speak symbols. When they talk about code
what they mean is: you get the coffee, we’ll get
the glory.

They mean work more, earn less. Someone
smashed the ceiling, it’s coming out of your check.
They mean isn’t it cute, you thought this was the future.

Elevator grope. Water cooler smirk. Toughen up.
This is the game. We don’t make the rules,
we just make the comments.

Syntax. Error. Modern does not mean fair.
Technology does not mean equal.

Act 3

When people asked why satellite communication took
so long, Grace hopper would pull out a thin copper wire
to demonstrate how far light can travel in a nanosecond.

Progress travels at the speed of Together. A million
glowing wires sending signals to each other. The nervous
system of a computer is called a motherboard.

Right now, there are little girls being born who will
never know what pay gap means. When they launch
a dream into space,

they will get a fleet of ships at their back. They will
build justice into every algorithm.

No one will question if their gender will affect their job.
They will only ask, what are we supposed to do this much light?