Wrestling Cable

Nov 23 2015

Copper cable, thick as my wrist

in its black glistening skin

was stiff with cold.

Electricians

wrestling cables

through boxes, conduits, holes,

plugging-in

naked wires.

The switch flicks

the line goes live.

Copper hums

its confined Niagara

of easy power.

Do electrons race

at the speed of light

along its copper strands?

Or do they nudge one another

on down the line

telegraphing the wave;

how excitement

becomes a contagion?

Insulation stripped, virgin metal exposed

revealing its rich coppery tone,

lighter than gold, but even more lustrous.

Too beautiful, I thought

to enclose in a lightless box.

While the old cables

are dull.

Electricity, or age

has depleted their brightness.

But still

copper is inexhaustible;

not one atom stripped,

no dark corrosion

corrupting its length.

And still conducting a fatal shock

easy as fingers

flick off, and on.

The electrician was hooking up my new generator today. Holding a light for him, I joked that if he decided to be an electrician because there was no hard physical labour involved, he apparently chose badly!

This is a job I would never volunteer for. Electricity scares me.

When the insulation was stripped and the virgin copper exposed, I was struck by its beauty:  a rich bright copper colour, lighter than gold, but even more lustrous.

The old wires made me wonder, as well. Decades of use have not left them brittle or corroded. And despite the many millions of volts that have passed through them, it appears not a single atom has burned away. Copper gives, yet remains pure and undiminished.

Although unintended, I think an attentive reader might find a sexual metaphor running through the poem. Consider stiff with cold …naked wires (I’ll discreetly ignore plugging-in!) …confined …easy …excitement and contagion …stripped and virgin and exposed. And finally dark(ness) and corrupt(ion).  …Or maybe it’s not so much attentiveness as it is the mind of the beholder!