Infrastructure rising over, stretched below
Holding as we calibrate
to the morning’s brightness
Gazing out the glass and gathering
the familiar that is still here
and the foreign things emerging

I confess I need your beating chest
pressed intimate against me,
your whisper breath to greet me;
The escalators are shut down for
some medical procedure
brought on by middle age
Even as the graying bones of this building
dredge a deep memory of
ascending architectural ambition
from a younger mind, it arcs
like ill-behaved electric charge
across the rails.

How, then, shall I grieve you?
What rite shall form the door
we step through together not knowing
when the costs of this sustaining
work will melt the fuse and when
the final call shall be:
Do not resuscitate?

Old familiar body,
trains and steps and steel,
glass and stained cement;
held close in frail embrace.