Cause and Effect

Sculpture by Do Ho Suh

Poem by Nick Pickering

Standing, strolling, squatting

Casually contemplating

Arms folded in front, hooked around the legs of the neighbor upstairs.

More like shoulders than stairs, really, but who cares?

Carrying a hundred others

Walking, pausing, waiting among even thousands more

Dangling from different heights

All washed over with shades of the same color, same feelings

Unified through inescapable perils and uncertainty.

It's besetting, sure

Hardly worth getting upset about.

From up here I almost feel for that one guy hanging by his lonesome

Beating blood red, obviously strained, but comfortably composed.

Kept company by affectionate burdens with nobody to help bear

Makes it difficult to have a conversation, to ask about his day.

He's probably doing alright

Who knows?