The Accountant

The manager sits down and ponders decisions.
She writes, then erases, and saves her revisions.
Industrious schemes crowd her desk to be signed,
For her workers' prosperity rests on her mind.

But the boss, she specialized in operations,
Her knowledge less suited to math contemplations.
Machinery, schedules, and deals are her purview.
She finds finance melts her poor brain into a stew.

Her accountant is not so concerned with the floor;
He finds physical machinations quite a chore.
His office and desk are his natural domain.
Where over his numbers and his spreadsheets he reigns.

Among all the buildings, trucks, and stocked resources
Are strung a great web of invisible forces,
Such as currencies, quantities, estimations,
Laws, taxes, contracts, controls and regulations.

The vast gears of economies turn, roll, and spin
In geometries that would drive Escher to gin.
Each document is linked to every other;
Free enterprise makes us all sisters and brothers.

The accountant, in his most unhealthy obsession,
Through dollars and cents he crafts a pure expression
For his love of quantifying what we treasure
And guarding it from those who use evil measures

To take from humanity more than they are due.
For when thieves steal from one, they hurt all of us, too.
The accountant, with vigilance, wages his war
Against fraud, errors, and negligence as guarantor.

Were he to say this, his boss would think he'd gone mad,
But to engineer business, the accountant is glad.

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Teach a Man to Fish