Three thin communication towers flash red or white
latticed, reminiscent of Eiffel’s wind-resistant core
taper to the size of a needle, thumb’s distance away
elegant sky skewers on the horizon.
Alongside, walking past brutish base, ominous,
cold gray steel, each spans a city block, fenced by
wire barbed and coiled, close to houses
and an elementary school, impenetrably hard
impervious to living creatures at its feet, those
encased in semipermeable membranes whose minds
wander through emissions and waves.
Distance, through miles or decades, creates delicacy
absent in the here and now, the low hum of traffic,
voices raised that obliterate all thought.
Time like a cataract clouds what was once aglow
with clarity, blurs the expression on faces, keeps
us in at night, book closed on our laps, words lost
rechristens us as erasure poem, radically distilled,
nestled between towering lines once resistant
to wind, blacked out, illegible.