Tonight's Poet Corner: Towers

Towers
by Belinda Roddie

When you ask thirteen
second graders to build a
skyscraper in fifteen minutes
out of paper cups, popsicle sticks,
markers and paper bags,
all while not saying a word
to each other in their teams, maybe
it's too much to ask for some sort of
result. But when these young ladies
present you with a real beauty,
the height of a first prize trophy cup -
it may not be a Needle or an Empire
or a green-crowned dame with a
frozen flame leading to the end of the
cool Atlantic, but out here on the Pacific
side with different festivities,
credit is given where it is certainly due.