“...The present is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing-- Too present to imagine" From Carpe Diem by: Robert Frost

We commuters see you across the pallid plains
that link work and home
as we travel up the veins
where we exchange our life.

From a distance, a gathering of tiny prisms,
you reach your small arms into the horizon.
From here you seem so slight so humble --
not a roar but a soft beckoning voice--
but we know, even from afar,
you are the beating heart of our city.

Closer in we hear you declare
our creative collective intelligence.
Your urgings-- day after day without fail--
have bent our backs and our hearts
and caused us to create possibilities.
We pour ourselves into your womb--
humming with fertile waiting
to make our small lives bigger.

You towering glass,
still glowing the night shift's light,
you massive mystery--
can we match your might, your height?

But you smaller ones closer to the ground
where we walk by your rocky-textured hide
of brown and maroon and faded gold,
people live in you.
They make their dreams beyond their schemes.
They touch and laugh and nourish their humanity.

But all of you-- making us together--
you bid OUR buildings not our tearing-downs.
We erect in you again and again our dailyness.
You give place to the rituals and routines
that weave our national fabric.

We come to you to begin our buildings,
sweeping aside the dust of our depression.
Inside your belly we build our new presents.
Not denying the past still attaching its sorrow to our souls,
we turn from the predator feeding on our wounds,
beyond our crowding confusing senses,
imagining and making ourselves with our buildings.

12/28/2001

Author's Note: This is a re-post. I wrote it shortly after 9-11. I place it here because of a request from a friend here.

Posted on 12/28/2001
Copyright © 2025 Glenn Currier