Edisonia: a stick of phosphorus, ca. 1862

1.
Our boy sits content amidst the glass
of his on-board lab, the soft lead of his printing
press, his perishable inventory, watching the pine flare
of the stretch between Detroit
& Port Huron at speed.

He forgets that to ride a train with its rattles
& jerks is to walk a tightrope – possible, with practice,
but not without its pains. He has learned to sway
but not what it is to lean out over
the precipice, until a poorly-laid piece
of track takes the risk for him, bucking the train long
enough that a stick of phosphorus – expensive,
incandescent stuff – jolts from its shelf
& lights it all up.

Edison stares. He stares
& then begins to stamp & beat at his beautiful fire,
and is singed but singing a little inside
How very curious!
when the rail-thin conductor appears.


2.
Outside his compartment, Edison’s digs
are an open secret, an affair the conductor
condones as long as his cheek
is larded with stick candy & his wife
gets her wholesale blackberries & butter.

But a fire? Smoke stealing under the door
& shouting down the rocking hallway:
Panic! Mayhem! Hysteria!
Then the conductor is dutifully, rightly
righteous, bursting through the door with a bucket
full to the brim & putting the fire out
before beginning to shout:

Wretched!
Boy!
BURNING!
My!
Train! !!

But the conductor is not a hasty man: he waits
until the train has groaned
to a halt
at the next hamlet
before he pitches it all out:

Test tubes, vials, jars, boxes, small
ingenious shelves, various apparatus,
treatises on chemistry whose underlined passages
gleam from white pages as they careen
out the back door,

Clumps of whiskery onions & bunches
of carrots that fly like quoits,

Bushel baskets of dusty local plums, smaller
containers of strawberries that drop
like periods at the end
of suitably dramatic sentences.

(BURNING!
My!
Train!)

Charred bundles of the Detroit Free Press,
tied with string in a way that is most
satisfying, what inflammatory periodicals
didn’t burn,

What butter hasn’t already melted,

And the arms & legs, right angles & musky
softnesses of a deeply chagrined
young man.


3.
Our boy on the tracks, amidst shards
of glass and co-mingled chemicals, half the alphabet
scattered between his legs, watches a flare of exertion
settle into the pale anger of the conductor
who must next write a report of the incident
for his superiors at the end
of the line.

As the train pulls away, leaving Edison
halfway home and the earnings
of the past year unhinged
& twisted around him, he conceives
of an experiment where a downcast
boy whimpers
when subjected to fire:

Eureka!


4.
The train picking up steam, the car empty
of Edisonia, the conductor stomps
away, wishing for a cup of tea & the clean sheets
of his policy manual:

Smoking compartment indeed!