A Thousand Windows

A thousand ways of seeing the same thing

A thousand windows
Look back at me
Some painted, some Victorian
Some high rise or haunted
The skyline breaks them
Into jagged little clusters
Unequal in everything
Including the sunshine
That kisses their slanted panes

A thousand different views
Of the same city
A couple thousand eyes looking out
The same second that I look in

Do we think of the city the same?

Are your glasses tinted with rose,
The way I know mine are
I wouldn’t trade the view for the world
For the Golden gate glows
With burnished magnificence
With or without the rose tinged vision

I see a thousand windows
with the city reflected back in them

Does it inspire us all the same?

Do you see the romanticism
Imbibed in the Painted Ladies
Or do you cringe instead
at its empty facade?
Does the urban wind toss around your thoughts,
Haplessly torn
between art and artist
Or does it blow them
in the right direction?

Do the thousand windows
Looking back me
Ever marvel at the stories
reflected in them
Like I do?