The Crystal Palace burned. His
nose is gone, his flanks graffiti’d.
Still he guards the walkway,
anciently couchant before a tapered
tower of steel, a sort of techno-skylark
to capture song, or messages.
Who knows what news the sky
might bring. Lightning. Blitz. Man’s
forged fire gone amok.
That dome of industry, iron skeleton
under crystal skin that shone
with heaven’s colors in its blue-
stained windows, the Palace
burned. Before its ruins
the lion lies at guarded ease.
Future is a figment of the sky.
His face is shadow.
Shadowed eye.
Taylor Graham, California, USA
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Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the California Sierra. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006) was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her latest project is Walking with Elihu, poems about the American peace activist Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith (1810-1879).
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