you sign. I sigh, resigned, try gesturing to my
many open tabs but you’re entranced: Beautiful.
I knock the table, sagging a sarcastic Heavy! your way
baiting inevitable rolled eyes, while you run entranced fingers over
dusty textures that this heathen sees as merely mechanical,
absolutely prepped now to receive a lecture.
Your colour’s high as we fumble for common concepts,
collecting better understanding as your enthusiasm
absolutely tests my resistance. Before I know it, your itchy digits
have collected instruments and I’m witnessing disembowelment.
You hand me the isoprop. Why me? I immediately frown.
You clown a smirk, and I gather from the resultant smug flicks
of intelligence that you’d hate to deprive me of such a unique
experience (git) before twisting the dials’ backsides my way.
And, damnit, you’re right. Nothing in my life is quite this concrete,
the discrete clunks of the hunks of Bakelite and metal
melding with the stink of alcohol, the smooth, shining movements
freed from imperfection loosing something else in me.
Our eyes meet, and you grin a gotcha, which I acknowledge
on my own roll of eyes and you smile, sign that we can reconnect
this elegant bit of history to itself and present tense,
because next you’re going to demonstrate how well it holds its place.
The thing hums its untempered ohms in somewhat smug digits
of undiminished calibration and I nod proper humility
to it and you, shining in the dimness of my tiny office,
wonder how to catalogue and categorise, and if it’s too late.
This was from the Day 11 prompt to write something inspired by the results of the Science Museum random object search and what came up was this little beauty. Subsequent wading through enthusiasts and this curiously entrancing teardown and testing video gave us this poem, for some reason!
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| A Muirhead Decade Resistance Box, named for the dials marked 1-10 moving in tens, hundreds, and 1000s of ohms |
