Economic September, 2008

What had been in the marble lobbies
maybe not exactly rising increases
with historical content, but rather

anxious morning sun’s ghostly soot
of finance from a past Tannery Row
withering return towards managers,

to redraft the construct, steel stature
atop the cant of red bricks, renovate
over upon what are recognized

roads and our- once republic- walls
about which now glass buildings
inhabit leases, these sudden shifts of

industry measures outside the brushed
falter of human lapse, an ambitiousness
to be brave, and waste cached dollars,

the iron fence, core heat and sulfur pits
as full as fire in the blood’s cauldron
fed with wood cords, scraps of planks,

raked from the fears on scorched hills
and the hard cliffs of New Hampshire,
as etched into brass plated ceremonies,

creosote preserved solid oak frames
against oil portraitures of the pioneers
altered in the failed brokerage firms.