'Winter in the City: Reflection in Steel and Glass'�
(c) Aperture/K.J. Hascall
1/15/07

The daylight folds into the darkening sky
like an owl tucking its wide-eyed face
under its wing and the weird, gray half light
wraiths of fog push against the skyscrapers.
The streetlights and brake lights reflect off long stretches of glass
and color the low-hanging clouds

in a simpering blush. A lap around the park, then the clouds'
bellies are split by the towering structures in the sky.
Snow, falling, is mirrored in miles of glass
and each unique snowflake sees its same face
as it plummets down the canyons of skyscrapers
before dissolving silently away on a lighted

sign near where a girl stands absently watching the stoplights
switching in unison down the avenue. The clouds
appear to pulsate while the rooms in the skyscrapers
are never dark in this sleepless city and the sky's
changes are hardly noticed by the people whose faces
instead watch their feet hit pavement or their reflections in the glass.

In the morning, the city awakens to see the glass
patterned and lacy with frost. The morning sunlight
makes the new snow glitter brightly and people shade their faces
against the glare. Gone is the gray, replaced by puffy clouds
and a blue so deep the ocean pales against the sky.
Barrel-chested mountains in the west, the skyscrapers

stand like sentinels. Pigeons swoop, their wings skyscraping
and parting the clouds. Looking out of their gilded glass
cages, the people don't notice the potential of the sky
where the scarlet sunset saturates the dying light
and the perfectly white canvas clouds
are blotted, pocked and streaked like so many weary faces

of pedestrians far below. Their footprints become their faces,
only a transient mark left behind because the skyscrapers
wall up their souls. Yet on occasion they pause, look to the clouds
and hope the tug of the jet stream would shatter the glass.
These people wish to follow the fading, plunging light
instead of pacing corridors watching tinted swatches of sky.

The night sky's dark face
glows with the light of the moon and the skyscrapers
cast blue shadows on the glass reflecting captured clouds.

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