Gray steel wind
and tears of rain
lash people and pigeons huddled on the steps.
The gray morning floods us round.
Grayness seeps into the cracks
of concrete,
into the shadowed clefts between
the buildings,
into the hair of old men wedded to the streets,
and in the eyes and hearts of those
silently awaiting
an opening of doors.

Gray drowns even the privacy of thought
and the rainbow of memory.
We clutch our collars against the morning's teeth.
Someone coughs and pigeons explode,
gray into gray they abandon the vigil,
vanish in a liquid sky.
Yet the human figures stand wordless,
inmoving, gray as thoughtless rock.
No meeting of the eyes or fingers.
No spark of colored laughter.
Only the grayness dares
to touch such woeful stone.

Such gray and weary words a friend
once whispered to me;
She said, "Some wounds never heal."
and though I hate her for it
here in the grayness waiting, watching
I see now what she meant.

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