Transitory

I stare up
between the downtown towers at all forms of stone and glass, gracefully balanced.
I imagine millionaires (a woman adjusting her stockings, persuading
a man on the efficacy of her abstract ideas, on percentages)
and wonder
what it feels like to be caged unwillingly against the sky.


Me,
I can drive beyond cobblestones to the river, so I do,
to the edge of the boundary of what I know. Now is undefined,
the bottom of the pendulum swing past the death of
winter
and the brightly looming entrance of spring.
Now is grey, limbo, uncommited, like the river.


I expected
ice, flowing from the north, and carrying with it the
apprehensive memory of another human settlement
No,
the water is bare, and from here it looks still,
like the color of stone: a horizontal tower touching everything
but the sky.
I am reminded all at once of a frozen grave
and the warmth of life within me. I shiver and breathe.


Turning back
into the city, I take comfort in the familiar feeling
of being trapped.