Known Light
Now you’re crossing that ocean, I have to confess
I’ve rather warmed to this shed where nothing is yours,
where your father found God in a Bunsen flame.
Chipped oak, a gas tap, scores of powdered specimens—
the perfect stage for resurrecting my A level chemistry.
I remember this much:
a Nichrome wire dipped in compounds then in fire
bares their truer colours.
It’s a bit like those stars,
the ones you rehearsed on the pebbles at Kemptown:
the blood in Betelgeuse, Rigel’s furtive blue—
they only show under fiercer, more devoted attention;
you have to inspire electrons if you want to unveil
calcium’s brick-red, barium’s green,
the strange lilac which means simply potassium.
Loyal friends, they return now at my diffident prodding,
make me smug as a sorcerer,
impatient for knowledge of the lone unlabelled jar.
Reveal yourself, sweet familiar, I whisper to glass
before I’m blinded by the white heat
of a magnesium heart.
I’ve rather warmed to this shed where nothing is yours,
where your father found God in a Bunsen flame.
Chipped oak, a gas tap, scores of powdered specimens—
the perfect stage for resurrecting my A level chemistry.
I remember this much:
a Nichrome wire dipped in compounds then in fire
bares their truer colours.
It’s a bit like those stars,
the ones you rehearsed on the pebbles at Kemptown:
the blood in Betelgeuse, Rigel’s furtive blue—
they only show under fiercer, more devoted attention;
you have to inspire electrons if you want to unveil
calcium’s brick-red, barium’s green,
the strange lilac which means simply potassium.
Loyal friends, they return now at my diffident prodding,
make me smug as a sorcerer,
impatient for knowledge of the lone unlabelled jar.
Reveal yourself, sweet familiar, I whisper to glass
before I’m blinded by the white heat
of a magnesium heart.
Page(s) 19
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