Electric Sonnet

In older days with pen and ink they wrote:
Not with bright phosphors as this sonnet is.
But please accept with love this my love's note --
It comes to tell you naught in love's amiss.

'Tis true that paper's tangible, and this
Electric phantom poem's substanceless.
But lover's words have e'er been air, iwis:
These, too, are lightning, loving nothing less.

My love is not so insubstantial,
Though far more giddy than gross parchment page.
As fleet electrons coursing at your call,
So in your circuit flows my passion's rage.


Not here, then not, like lightning's too-brief forks,
But as a steady current, my love works.