For Jerome Rolnick, z”l
We walk up
along the edge of a hay field
that hasn’t yet been hayed this summer
swatting aside seed heads
and circling horseflies
slipping between rust red trees at the hilltop.
After a dip, the land rears up
like a horse
before dropping down again,
planting its hooves in hard-packed dirt.
A creek draws a question mark
–or is it a gaff? –
around a shale ledge
gritting Mosasaurus teeth
and we stomp in our rubber boots
past the vexed branches of a fallen tree
searching for the question.
Arriving at a grassy lane
that unfurls like a neat green canal
my brother-in-law points to a sign and says:
“This was the route of the Transatlantic Cable.
AT&T used to fly over every week
with a surveillance sniper
who would fire down at you –
warning shots –
if you were digging anywhere near it.”
I find this hard to believe, but then
It’s also hard to believe that the cable –
a triumph more glorious than was ever won on the field of battle –
is obsolete.
A VCR. A microcassette recorder. A Sunoco map of Maryland.
That we can communicate now
via radio waves from point A to point B
at the speed of light.
“The transatlantic cable weighed 1.1 tons per nautical mile,”
says A.I. Overview. “This includes the copper wire conductor,
the gutta-percha insulation,
and the tarred hemp and iron wire sheathing.”
Gutta-percha.
Gut-perch.
The flaming yellow insides of a knife-opened fish.
Does anyone remember:
It took 16 hours for Queen Victoria’s 98-word message
to travel the cable from the Isle of Wight
to President Buchannan at the Summer White House in Bedford, Pennsylvania?
Europe and America are united by telegraph.
Along the way, the words stopped to put their feet up, reclining on chaise loungers
chortling and chittering in a haze of cigar smoke.
At night, I read Harry Potter to my daughter
and wonder: If wizards had cellphones
would they still need magic?
If Kingsley Shacklebolt had an iPhone 16 ProMax, for instance
would he have needed to send a patronus –
that prowling lynx –
to Bill and Fleur’s wedding
warning them the Ministry had fallen?
Rising from the grass tips
I smell tarred hemp, iron wire sheathing.
Leaving the woods I see
a dragonfly on a mineral white rock
with wings like the square-rigged sails of a pirate ship,
a dark mark.