A Window on Seattle in 2018
Through the window, the yellow crane,
a slowly spinning sentinel,
casts me out like an infidel –
a refugee to be in misty rain.
A dark bird flies from the garden
into the condo, crowded sky
where it loses its stricken cry
to the street’s ambulance sirens.
Everywhere here, business is good
and grows wild like a contagion
from the campus of Amazon –
the great Ant-eater of old neighborhoods.
In this Bezosian babel
where the rents are rising higher,
affordable living expires
in the wired urban techno-babble.
Fern and moss, ivy and cedar
are some remaining mementoes
in these April morning shadows
of Cascadia and its green whisper.
The wrens now sing elegies
In the carbon monoxide dawns
of this metropolis of pawns
played by the latest oligarchy.