I wrote this poem over 25 years ago, back when I was a student. I think it was my best work of that time. It’s the only poem from those days that I kept.
I was always inspired by large-scale, mundane engineering works such as highway overpasses, towers to carry high-voltage lines, etc. They always seemed (and still seem) so majestic, even though no one thinks much about them. Engineering works are that way sometimes: amazing, and utterly un-noticed. Somehow they also seem a bit sad, especially these static ones that literally stand in one place for their entire lifetimes as the more interesting world changes all around them.
The original idea of these was to contrast such works to more traditional statues. Most statues are build to recognize and remember powerful men. Towers like this are built, well, just to serve a purpose, and not recognize or remember anything.