Incandescence Comes in Pouches

Intense light subdivided

Into many lesser lights,

That’s what the wizard managed—

Others had already made

Greater and more brilliant light,

But couldn’t parcel the bits.

That’s what Tom Edison did—

Not inventing electric

Light but how to package it.

To this day, icons for bright

Ideas are little cartoons

Of clear glass bulbs, not pure light.

It’s possible what happened

With the packaging of light

Just paralleled early life,

Metabolism folding

Fully on itself only

Once packaged in walls of cells,

Ever since which, endlessly

Subdividing further cells.

For the light shed by language,

Information streams harnessed

In fresh thermodynamic

Cascades, something similar

Obtained—slip incandescent

Semes into the envelopes

Of narratives and behold,

God can say, Let there be light,

And then, over and over,

More gossiped stories by night.