Paris 1971

A rugged tracery of broken lines rises from earth, hatch marks of exposed ironwork scorched orange by sun striking metal, splitting light.

My eyes travel from platform to spire, and return to masses streaming like ants on pilgrimage climbing and descending the metal web.

Chains of sculpted crowns skirt juxtaposed bars layers of the monolith, and mask the subtle sway of the ancient elevator as it ascends to platform three.

Dizzied by images of city and river against the sky photos half captured in my mind, landscape beyond this tower's contradiction of space and angle.

Great bolts find the steel, burnished hemispheres eyes that see travelers thirst for Paris and the magic promised in Fodor's Europe.

Into cobalt ponds below I send two silver coins, like the dangling earrings I buy from a vendor on the street, and observe concentric ripples fade.

I could step from platform three, dive easily into pools of sky, swim, but unlike my coins come to rest, beyond the tower within the walls of an uncommon garden's blue-brown earth.

Kathleen Van Schaick 2008

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