Conductivity

At work, as part of orientation training, my husband says 
they've been watching videos that illustrate the dangers 

of high voltage electrocution: men climbing atop 
trains grab cables either accidentally or on purpose, 

and almost instantly their bodies explode 
like fireballs. Buckling from the unimaginable

energy of 25,000 volts, their bodies char 
like coal and just like that, nothing remains 

except a little ash, a little dust that flies 
off into the wind without a trace. Perhaps, 

at the moment he and his colleagues were 
finishing up the last of their required disaster 

viewing, my students and I were reading 
a short essay which compared poetry to

an event like the  formation of constellations 
millions of years ago, after a star exploded 

and died. Can you give to someone else 
what has been? The writer said, the task 

of the poet is to allow others to wonder at 
explosions. In this country, around 400 deaths 

per year are caused by high-voltage electrical 
injuries; 50 to 300 people die from being struck

by lightning, though at least 30,000 suffer
minor shocks that don't result in death. 

Blue or white-hot and crackling, electricity
only wants to ground itself—which is why 

electricians set up ground wires outside the house
for the current to find a path back to the earth. What 

was there until it wasn't anymore; and how much 
of what is volatile can we safely conduct through

thickets of exchange? We don't  see how or where, 
but everything is always bristling. Everything.