The Crane

Simon TJH-Banderob

The Crane

The crane, one leggèd, long armed who stands in scaffold nest whose steel neck is swinging scythe-like east and west— it picks and plucks and wrecks-- it eats my town one brick building every night. This old pond of rail juncture and cul-de-sac canals where this crane was hatched slaten shingles, rosy bricks and sandstone the crane swoops round marble, beams and steeples people’s palaces of prayer and play and leisure modest measure of this town whose skyline shrinks the crane can only rise. But even cranes take awkward flight and so will this kingly specimen leave behind a rectilinear hole in heaven but not before this town of towers, vaults and crowned façades is picked and pummeled into the plain.