Elevator

In the season's growing dark,
The entry to our private park

Is accessed through a sliding door,
Where on the now ascending floor

A formerly celestial leaf
Has fallen down and come to grief,

Sprung perhaps from boughs which preen
On the garish carpet’s green,

Its prefab forest proud and tall,
Glued in sections on the wall,

On the roof, the solar flare
Of the car’s autumnal glare

Created no doubt by the light
From our planet’s rising height.

It doesn’t seem especially strange
That our vista doesn’t change:

Experience the highest view
Just by pushing 22—

About the same as what is done
By pressing randomly on 1,

A panorama also seen
At all the stages in between—

Our expanding universe in toto
Summed up in a single photo,

Its sterile world brought not much nearer
By the elevator's cringing mirror,

But a miracle, that, even here,
Nature scrambles to appear.