Lit Windows

by Mark Belair

Back when lit brownstone windows
along Boston’s snowy Beacon Street

let you know you were out in the cold,
just a rough, unformed student

pondering whatever the
polished lives inside may offer;

back when each window
opened onto a private reality

you imagined as ever-changing
yet enduring so exalted: back

then such abounding lives seemed as remote
as that youthful time should be to you now, but

you remain—as you look up
to lit brownstone windows

winters and miles away
and try to imagine, as then, the

fine flux that furnishes
lasting lives—

an outsider
trying to write

your way
in.