Jacob’s Ladder – IEEE Spectrum

I know now how the sparks can climb,
in broadening arcs of ions—
the heat they grow inside themselves
like 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 began
anew in darker shades of blue. Then
electrons leaping spoke to me,
not in words, but in dignity:

how they escaped the box where they
were 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 here
as unseen bursts to recombine,
smaller parts of the grand design.