Before the offices

I only anticipated the large buildings

containing them,

on spacious floors,

the streets casting immediate circuits;

lattices of bleak light

for thoughts and cars to seep

at street level

but then I soared

from inside myself,

rose into the glaring light

of the offices

surrounding everything,

and lived in the light

for decades,

swirling like a noctuid

'round a bulb,

earning my keep

and many fellow faces

as voices rose and fell,

grainy like illuminated drizzle;

low-lit curtains 'cross the fields:

mixed choirs of people and years,

until afterwards, inside the soaking aftermath:

the faint gleams of distant office rooms thinning,

'til just occasional nodes of uncertain shifts remained

in the grayscale, way behind, elusive,

far off,

bopping lanterns off a vessel in a storm

off the farthest reaches of a rocky Baltic coast

in a deep November surge

and I must look the other way,

barefoot

into periods of woodlands, swamps and days,

life as thin as silk

and misty memories