Tag Archives: towers

Verse on Another Tower

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The Kingdom Tower, Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom Tower, Saudi Arabia

Meeting an engineer helping design and build what will be the world’s tallest building at over 3,250 feet, the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, reminds Steve of his first published poem. “I had written it in Chicago in 1963 while in college watching the new skyscrapers being built to surpass the then tallest building in town, the Prudential Building.”  “Towers” was published 10 years later in The Anglican Review.

TOWERS

Of course a tower is built by starting from
the bottom. Strong workers and machines make
a joint to earth with wet, grey gravel–form
with time a foundation almost like rock.
Orange steel is welded, riveted, and made
to stand naked pointing skyward. Then blocks
and bricks are hoisted slowly up the side
providing covering flesh the tower lacks.

Small children make towers in trees, and these,
though only made of rotting boards, still stand
as proudly strong in little children’s eyes
as those from which much older men descend.
But both kind of towers still seem to say
with their builders: we look down on the sky.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, July 19, 2015

Tower of Strength

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Why Atlas, Samson, Hercules, Paul Bunyan
and Superman aren’t with us anymore…
and why the latest SuperHero won’t last.

He was strong. Unlike some men his size
power pulsed, constrained–there was no fat.
He stood tall. His eyes looked down on those
passing by who turned and stared, impressed.
He would smile. He joked when asked his height,
Five feet…twenty!” Childhood awe returned
(big is best, is boss.) Authority
is imposed. The strong do what they want.

He had never been a little child–
young, but never small. Assumed adult,
he was proud to grapple, fight and hold,
lift and shoulder, carry, guard, protect.
Work was good, but work was never done.
Satisfaction was postponed. Trials like
cancer cells dividing, unrestrained,
overwhelmed him. Tasks enough to make
gods despair. Then buildings built decayed,
bridges fell, and wars blazed in the land
he had calmed before. He went to bed.
The world’s weight will break the strongest man.

-Steve Shoemaker
[Published in Response, Journal of the Lutheran
Society for Worship, Music and the Arts, No. 3,
1976.]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies to Steve for the formatting. The first three lines were originally centered. The blog hasn’t cooperated this morning. Art fell victim to technology. BUT without te3chnology “Tower of Strength” would not have come your way.

Join Steve at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN Tuesday, October 1 at 7:00 p.m. for a Tuesday Dialogues program featuring Steve’s poetry.

Atlas and St. Patrick Cathedral

Atlas and St. Patrick Cathedral

Verse – Towers

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Of course a tower is built by starting from

the bottom.  Strong workers and machines make

a joint to earth with wet, grey gravel–form

with time a foundation almost like rock.

Orange steel is welded, riveted, and made

to stand naked pointing skyward.   Then blocks

and bricks are hoisted slowly up the side

providing covering flesh the tower lacks.

…

Small children make towers in trees, and these,

though only made of rotting boards, still stand

as proudly strong in little children’s eyes

as those from which much older men descend.

But both kind of towers still seem to say

with their builders:  we look down on the sky.

[from The Anglican Theological Review, early  1970s]

Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL