Forge ahead Ahab kill the mighty white beast
and wander Ishmael for a thousand years
Ten thousand times to cut and strip the blubber
of the great white fish not knowing its vulnerability
Fiddle and fumble as we do
who would ever expect we might succeed
and succeed so well that we kill off
that from which we live?

We will make no more microwaves
in the city of industry here
In these acres and acres of wheels and gears
From the throbbing and pounding
the great heart has seized
and a resounding silence has come

And I used to seek the night in its cool, crisp shadows
and now it seeks me with its burning heart
From celestial calm to a kind of human fever
I think now I cannot escape and wonder when the change came
and why?
What drove me from my stillness to this madness?
And I think it could have been a dream
What business have we made
to frighten so our souls?

I want to pretend the great metal presses
are really giant cookie cutters
They cut and print in chocolate and peanut butter
and I imagine I am not a part of all that I see
and only a silly dreamer

The clear cool night used to suckle me
in all the persons that I think I am
Hidden deep within - singular voices cry out
I am your child I am your mother I am dad
And now the night hums like many factories
I have seen the forming machines
churning-out microwaves

the thirty-ton press
driven by the broad belts
and the wheels and the bulbous off-center cam
that swings around and around driving the cutting blade
lending it its mighty momentum
The sheets of metal placed
and the great clutch engaged
The blade comes down, striking and forming
bending the steel to drive one crease
into some engineer’s blueprint
of the now common household appliance

The hum and roar the clank and hiss
Hands scampering in and out like sea crabs
in and out as the blade rises and falls
In when the light turns green
Out when the light turns red
And now an infrared beam stops the blade
if hands are slow or wrong
The times are mostly past of fingerless and armless men and women
in the world of microwave
This is a mutation and adaptation to the times
of the smoke stack industry to the realization
that this is bad for business

A simple rhythm gathered from a universe of forms
So simple for progress to be made
All geared-in as we are and so to speak
and wondering if it is our nature
that drives us on

And so one day when unfurled in my daily purpose
and wearing the uniform of industry
I pass the king of microwave
The real estate signs are up and the windows dark
weeds high around the once grand porticoes
The trades have descended like big birds
to feed upon the dead
not judging, merely supplanting
The signs saying ask for Jack or Nellie
Boarded shut, the jobs are gone
The air whistles through the naked boards
and the flash and thunder of the night is stilled
now and forever

I come to seek myself as I always do almost as a stranger
and I’m not so sure he speaks to me this time
he’s been heavily laid-upon this once-thought immortal one
and I learn it’s harder to go back
than to just plunge ahead, onward, farther
flowing down the stream

And somewhere amidst this cascading water course
I’m catapulting down along the pristine and demure mountainside
There is an icy-eyed one that’s leaping up
leaping and diving up and ever up
how can this be? this fish is marvelous
He obeys celestial law and swims a thousand miles
as if it were an inch because it’s all in the motivation
all in the commitment of the heart

We ask what natural purpose we are heir to
We say we explore the limits of the mind
We teach we move and climb with method
with skill and direction and I wonder
The rust and dust
The broken homes and handless men
and countless stories simply untold
Don’t they scream a muted cry
if we listen once into the silence?

So what crime to say what future comes?
What violation to say we’ve come this way before?
What, a felony to say we have alone ourselves?
One broad and eternal moment that never changes?
What madness to gaze upon a clear, still night
to consider what the condition of my heart?