Before the offices
I only anticipated the large buildings
containing them,
on spacious floors,
the streets casting immediate circuits;
lattices of bleak light
for thoughts and cars to seep
at street level

but then I soared
from inside myself,
rose into the glaring light
of the offices
surrounding everything,
and lived in the light
for decades,
swirling like a noctuid
'round a bulb,
earning my keep
and many fellow faces
as voices rose and fell,
grainy like illuminated drizzle;
low-lit curtains 'cross the fields:
mixed choirs of people and years,
until afterwards, inside the soaking aftermath:
the faint gleams of distant office rooms thinning,
'til just occasional nodes of uncertain shifts remained
in the grayscale, way behind, elusive,
far off,
bopping lanterns off a vessel in a storm
off the farthest reaches of a rocky Baltic coast
in a deep November surge

and I must look the other way,
barefoot
into periods of woodlands, swamps and days,
life as thin as silk
and misty memories