Crows working the ground,
picking at husks. Harvest
one place starves the rest,
crosswinds can’t be read,
and nothing can parse
the syntax of the soul.
Listen: it’s the thin wail
of a world gone wrong;
what takes cover under
the tongue is the song
that won’t be sung, the
waters are rising, the sun
has sunk behind the many-
storied towers of glass,
catching the last ver-
million light; inside,
rooms an empty cash
write-off, sheets of glass
a sheathe around vacancy.
Nothing breathes inside.
Below, the wind picks up
a plastic bag and fills it
like a sail; it spins across
our line of sight, is caught
and replicated in those
thousand panes of glass,
the walls become a tower
of animated trash. So close
to Wall St. now, you can
almost hear the crash.
Out
there,
as
Liberty
lifts
her torch of
stone, gray
on her island
rock, Ishmael,
carrying the drowned
Queequeg in his arms, stumbles
with his burden to the shore.
__________
Image By: https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/images/Chains-2.jpg