Bildungsroman, 1999

It was late in the empire of concrete.
Vultures liked to perch on the austere ledge
outside my window, scouting the horizon.
Think of angels, then think their opposite:
all the things we ache to hide flung open,
soft, too soft, like a newborn barely formed.
They were cold, I think. The sun dried their feathers.
I was lonely, a head above a desk,
ready to plunge into the glinting river
below my office called the Beltway, catch
like a pebble in a wheel’s stainless spokes.
This was before the towers fell. Before
the dot.com bubble burst, before Gitmo,
Dodd-Frank, Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.