Stele

Ah, tower, standing there with steel skin and inward eye,
protecting your golden hollowness; lighthouse,
watching your stony shore lit against the clouded, drenching sky;
building your escarpment, your walls, digging your trenches,
making war against the ground that made you, raised in defiance
against the struggling earth clinging at your base,
tree, warding off any who would tap your nectar,
lonely and severe, pushed up from harder soil
I've fallen from your branches
only to be entangled in your roots,
beating against your hardness, your beating
heart never heard, your face a smooth cliff
looking out over the soft landscape, eroded and dangerous
always changing from the beat of our suffering hands,
our endless lives, coming and going, while you wait
for the end and a chance to change.