There was one window
On about the seventh floor
Of the abandoned paperboard factory

Every window had been broken so far
Danny broke three
Clay two
Me one
Eric eight
But for that one window
On the seventh floor
Glaring at us
Daring us

Eric pitched a no-hitter
Against the Sievewright Sifters
Danny caught a foul at a Patrones game
Clay won a huge Bugs Bunny at the fair
(I was cut from the school's team but kept that to myself)

Still that window
Hovered
Unbroken
Spotless perhaps
Giving views
Of a muddy river
And sagging city
(Or would have
If anyone still worked there)

Then one day
We were walking
Just four kids
Walking
Where a crowd of a thousand
Would once mob
Each day at eight
Then at three
Then at eleven
But now never again

And that window was broken
Left with an open jagged entryway
About a foot in diameter
Just a little bit of each corner remaining
The northeast in dangling pieces
And I saw what did it
But didn't say
A dead pigeon lay near the empty Dumpster

I let them marvel
At whatever transient hobo hitchhiker
Might have come by
With a throwing arm
Like Nolan Ryan's