The arches found the city which the river underlies.
The tall cathedral towers are aspiring to the skies.

We would all be very happy in that geometric land
Some above and some below, but each according to a plan.

The rich are the deserving and the poor accept their lot
And the rich have mausoleums and the poor will get a plot.
Meanwhile, what symmetry and balance we have bought!

Did anybody notice that the pieces fit so neatly
You could jumble up the city once and fill it in completely?
You could jumble up the city like a set of building blocks
Collect them when they’ve fallen and return them to their box.

 
 
 
Under the hood:

This poem was a response to a prompt based on an image by Piero Pizzi Cannella entitled Cattedrale (ca. 2004). Writer V.C.Linde suggested this prompt on her blog, Listen for the Reverb. To illustrate it here, I created a collage of photographs and drawings of various bridges, cathedrals, and towers, most of them in England and France, many of them out of copyright. To the extent any of the component images is protected by copyright, their use here is a fair use under U.S. copyright law.