The Founders

A million spires of silver and stone
glow in the midday sun.
Deeper into the concrete jumble,
the sky is a sliver of twilight,
thick with smoke,
crowded with air taxis
jockeying in the maze.

Each successive stratum
steals more from the sky,
with awnings, porches, mirrors
angled to hoard the light.
At the bottom, three miles beneath
boardrooms and penthouse suites,
the streets are dark,
the ground cooled with pipes
bleeding away the pressure
of trillion ton buildings.

Herein live the Founders,
men, women, children
who repair and shore up
the crumbling foundations.
They gather under streetlamps,
descend into the earth
and partake of rituals unknown
to the cloudminders.
Between pilings sunk in the ground,
they kneel and feel soil
with their calloused hands.
Elders hand down the legends,
a thousand years old,
of an age when the sky ruled the world,
and the earth was alive with green.

Scott Speck
06/01/99