I believe that changes come not with the
Fall of empires or
The turning of revolutions,
Threats of unnamed disaster or
The specter of social upheaval
But through tiny incremental changes that seem
Insignificant at the time:
Antibiotics,
The hub-and-spoke system for air carriers,
Mobile phones,
And too much else to mention.
Today a twenty-eight year streak came to an end
When
I ran out of incandescent light bulbs.
They hadn’t been available for two years, and
Some people stockpiled them,
But I didn’t and I also didn’t object to
The faults of early CFL’s—
Their unconventional design,
Their gradual buildup to a full light,
Stark blue-white tinged with yellow,
A light that unlike anything found in nature,
But they improved
And it was hard to tell which was which
Unless you looked at the corkscrew tubing
That reminded me of a pig’s tail.
Sprouting from the base of the bulb.
Halogens washed over us next,
Along with LED’s, sub-ends of ends of eras.
And so I climbed my short ladder to replace
Two burned out incandescents
In the ceiling fan lights and
Found I had only one replacement bulb.
I went to the Rices Hardware a little dizzy
From all the techno names of the bulbs,
Fully expecting to buy a pigtail bulb
But found instead a CFL that looked like
An incandescent,
So if I squint
I can pretend that incandescent bulbs have not vanished
But undergone a metamorphosis, a strange transformation of sorts,
And they’re still here
But don’t tell anyone.
It will be
Our little secret.
Dan Verner
March 11, 2016
Biscuit City 