Today on my way to see
The Surrealistic Adventures of Women Artists,
I tripped and fell into a hole of sky,
tumbled up, and landed
at the Locke Insulator Company,
Victor, New York, circa 1903.
I saw my baby grandfather James
held in the arms of great-uncle Fred,
their father in the laboratory
just out of sight, mixing silica,
filling beakers, stealing heat
from great-grandmother’s oven
long past a decent hour of the night.
Great-grandfather Locke and Sons
molded their molten glass
into green and purple domes—
thick, smooth, helmet-headed—
to perch atop telephone poles
and line the railroads
of a nation newly on the move.
These Irish, these unschooled,
these pre-autistic geniuses:
My heart is linked to theirs
by something like the cord
that links The Two Fridas,
sitting earthbound, politely in chairs,
their glistening aortas exposed
to the world in the still-life
of a Sunday afternoon.
About C.W. Emerson
