beggared on this taunted key
her eyes, benighted, smashed and hollowed,
no longer descry the encirclement
of strapping glass and steel

thus cowered beneath such plumb hauteur,
she finds herself now wimpled in
a creeping green
while her walls bleed of a jealous neglect

where flaked façade like dandruff drips
and grumbling brick works effloresce,
into her winter’s final stupor
there she rancorously slips

for who could love her now?

those weeds grown long around her feet?

yet still we look

through the fog
through the trees
through the dearth of honey bees to where
the dewdrops sit, like sugared spit,
upon this old maid’s bristled lip