Red lights prick the dull
Morning skyline, lined grey
With worried looking clouds;
A conference of cranes saluting
Each other, leaning in as if
To catch the latest gossip; how
The silhouetted city’s profile
Is changing – you wouldn’t
Recognise the place these days –
High risers everywhere you look,
Cluttering up the spaces where
The eyeline used to hover, picking
Out new patterns in passing cotton buds
Of cumulus, pressing through
The crenelated outline of roof tops,
Gently squeezing past, looking for
Somewhere convenient to
Precipitate their watery largesse.
These days, it seems, you have
To crane your neck to catch
A bare patch of unadulterated blue –
Unless you’re simply satisfied
With broken reflections from
Serried rows of office windows
Gazing coldly back at you, as they
Rise up to graze the sky in their
Varied shapes – from ships prows
Bluntly cutting through the once
Dominant seas of leafy green
Crowning the heads of dutiful
Municipal trees – to dumpy
Rhomboids and rigid tombstones
Pushing up aggressively like
Grim-faced bouncers in your face…
While others dress themselves in
Various shades of tinted glass,
Giving off the air of an underwater
World, through which we slow-footed,
Marooned pedestrians stiffly pass…
And where once you could bask
In the Sun’s gregarious rays
Reflecting back off the hard stare
Of streetwise paving stones, now
We walk in the shadow of
Mammon’s upraised monuments
That have sprouted up magically
Like the one-eyed giants that
Inhabited those Greek myths of old;
And if you dare to complain –
Well, that’s progress – or so we’re told…
Ian J McKenzie
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