Cement City

Winter Scars

What does it take

To bring a building to its knees?

The secret to know

Is that it breathes

       In

              And out

                     Silently

(Not its tenants, no, nor the electricity

Nor the water flushed through its pipes)

But steady your hand

       against the concrete wall.

Stacked from seventeen floors of cement, steel and necessity

It stands while sleeping

Just a smudge, a child among neighbours

That pierces

       The frost-tipped skyline.

With each winter, the building cries

       Precipitation drips off the windows inside

              And sinks into the plastered walls

Where mold grows in rust-coloured patches

As it sighs, sound lost in the wind that whistles and jeers.

       The building refuses to topple.

There's no giant to fear

Just the winter cracks that spread

With each laboured breath

        (Wrinkles are painful to have, it'll say if it could talk)

Like spiderwebs

The same neglect that ails Time as it hobbles by.

       Hold Time's hand

       Hold us in each other's arms

And let us pray on our knees

So the building

       Does not need to feel

The need to learn

       To fall. 

Granted this poem took a different turn as I neared the end. It helped me out of a writing funk though.