Jacob’s Ladder

I know now how the sparks can climb,in broadening arcs of ions—the heat they grow inside themselveslike some permission or belief.But at ten, it seemed mystical;their frown, glowing, then invisible.Gone. Save the odor of ozone.I was young and scared and alone.But the buzz and brightness begananew in darker shades of blue. Thenelectrons leaping spoke to me,not in words, but in dignity:how they escaped the box where theywere born. Joined in a plasma haze,they rose unafraid. So it seemed.I imagined them as sunbeams,then as disrupting solar flares—distant but, in time, reaching hereas unseen bursts to recombine,smaller parts of the grand design.