Thursday, January 25, 2018

WATER TOWER EMERITUS

In the wintery distance, almost completely
obscured by the sand-
colored steppes of ivyless brick 

notched impressively, here and there,
with gaudier bullets
of gunsteel and glass—

a dogged shambles of a sentinel, 
the city's last 
tired and cantankerous protector

can yet be glimpsed
grieving 
that old world cataclysm.

Still new this 
sense of 
plain vanity, he hovers evenings

in his cloistered limbo—tearless 
and tilting
just a little bit, as if preparing slowly

to turn and go,
but 

still arrow-
headed, deadpan, pitch 
black—with resolve.