To Building J

[to be yelled at twice before the storm even hits to be denied insurance to find yourself in the dark afternoon torrent receiving hail to be cornered by a desperate poet and awakened in the dark by thunder and phone bells]

it comes back
to the space
the empty half of
the building
parallels
of light
cast on
leagues of empty carpet
rectangles of window
gold-hued light here
blue there
landscape trees
tossing ten shades of spring green
harboring
clouds like ships
and great shining black birds

we gaze from
a prefab cathedral
a strangely sacred place
space being money you know
so here is wealth
clean lines clean
to take in air
and let it go

stillness pervades
this rectangle
pressed on all sides by
busyness
productiveness
meet the
contract
dead
lines
there we sit
on rectangle mats
in stillness within
the rectangle
of metric streets
trucks following cars following trucks
the birds’ voices wind instruments
against the worried strings
percussive fenderbenders of
background traffic
inside
a worker
takes lunch
shoulders raised to her ears
spine curved toward a monitor
among two hundred monitors
within the urgent rectangle
the real life only
21 paces away
within the
window-lined
window-lit
unfurnished
unlikely
space
where a quarter hour
can be a rich infinity
where god has always loved i have always been you have always been we have always been me you us them