Philo Farnsworth, inventor of television (Spring 2004)

In Idaho, a freshly-tilled field told Philo Farnsworth
seeds of light could be broadcast through pinholes,
a picture reconstructed at the other end, by someone
who wasn’t your neighbor. His Christian name was love,
the surname he wanted was knowledge. He wanted
to reconstruct the pattern at the other end, so knowledge
could issue green tongues of flame lapping kernels of fire.

A tilled field, a team of horses through the field,
the soil blonde from sun that caught its tousling.
On the other side, maiden knowledge ascending
in a green leafy robe, golden-skinned, Hagia Sophia,
but here, he strained his sight beyond the field:
seeds were broadcast into furrows, each industrious valley

leafy, electrified, with eyes. The telephone lines were harnesses
that swung between the sea-green bells of glass
when hailstorms came. But voices in the lines
leapt oceans he hadn’t seen. How lonely and studious
he would become (qualities not always rewarded).
As they sputtered in his laboratories, induction coils
failed to spark sometimes, and his pilgrimage
did not turn out as he had hoped.

When he did see the ocean, habit dictated
it was fields of water -- no different in fact from a cornfield,
each wave another furrow in a pattern. What was written
on that field though? He felt exhausted after seeing it,
as if he’d plowed through miles of earth to get there
to find his swimmer’s arms fallen, his body prostrate,
the maiden deflowered in sunspots, black cores in searing coronas,
green blades broadcast like the pages of some discredited theory.

Force yourself to think of the world of matter against him.