Maine: a magpie's eye

There were no marks of red-backed lichen on the ties, nor young pines from where seeds had blown into cracks, as there had been on the abandoned rails running east from the White Mountains. Here the line was yet fragrant with creosote, the rails well-laid, seamless, and rusted, suggesting both placement and abandonment were of recent event.

A grey pile of fox scat lay on the ties, a few days old. Within a half-mile, I found the author trotting the stretch. The path cleared by the railway had given a clean thoroughfare that he used to assert claim. Not looking about in any caution towards rivals nor stealth towards prey, his motions assured, he moved on, till the wind brought him a scent, or else the rattle of a metal cup, and he paused, caught fear of me, and ran for the pines. I wonder if he considered me pretender or conqueror come to rob earth from the meek and leave marks of my own, or just passive intruder, the clear ruin of a morning’s stroll. Then wonder too what he will think when the rail company finally makes good on the pledge of service up from Portland and the diesel and boxcars crowd out his leisure, the engine ignorant of his mark.

I was intent in my trespass on following the old telegraph lines, many of which yet held their insulators. The light caught in a few on a pole from which a slack cable trailed. I had a mind to fetch one up, thinking it a pretty thing to sit inside a window whereon it might be looked at of a morning, and shinnied up the cable. Sitting astride the cross spar, having reached the top, I looked at the three three remaining caps, each a different shade of blue, like they were the clutch of a crystalline crow whose nest I’d come to rob. All were broken.

I reached out to one of the caps and twisted it from the peg, drawing the ball of a finger against the cut of it. The wound was small but relentless, and spit blood for the rest of that day. I dropped the cap to the ground, then myself after and found some scattered shards where the glass had split from the wire and hatched out lightning. Having a magpie’s eye, I picked up one.

In Iowa I had seen long ranks of telegraph poles file thru a marsh. While the tax of sodden feet and knee-deep mud might not have been too great to prevent me, the trouble of climbing a pole without any knobs and then down again without dropping the prize was. Those insulators still stand, waiting the thief with a ladder and a boat.

By afternoon I had come across three other poles I could climb with the aid of tree or cable, and each time gotten sore joints, shortness of breath, and scratches tarred with the sap of firs. And then, gotten too the satisfaction of holding in raw palms an artifact earned thru search and labor in the grip of aching hands. Three whole ones of differing shades and era, each an aqueous, marine hue, of a tint more common to anemones and inlets, or else to eyes. I lifted all to light and gazed uninterrupted. Where I have otherwise met these colors, such might be a manner to distress the beholden and make blush.

There were other ends in mind than to tote glass weight, but the jewels were too precious to leave. I wrapped the three inside some clothing and hefted them out, admiring that there had been a time when even what was made for utility and obsoletion was crafted with beauty.