The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is terrifying. It is far too many pieces of ugly gray iron, matched and melded to fit the jigsaw vision of the brilliant Bartholdi.

Tower, tower, towering massive hideously spectacular daytime tower, teeming with leaning awestruck admirers.

Oh sparkling, golden nighttime tower with personal bodyguards in smart fatigues. Oh luminous nighttime tower with an aerial whirlpool of wind-channeling bowels. Enough metallic magnetism to attract camera clutching hands from Japan and Britain, Russia, Argentina and Sweden. Oh tower, you sparkle on an impeccably punctual basis and the tourists gasp, "How magical!" on the hour.

Tower, I am the size of one of your bones. You have millions of immovable bones that expand and contract with the seasons.

Tower, you fit quite neatly onto postcards and into cameras, you have many clones in five different colors, ten different sizes, 67 of you swing in unison on a big metal ring, you are the subject of devotion in posters and keychains, teacakes and coffee cups. You tower in pockets and damply cupped palms, on many tongues and in everyone's idea of 'the world out there...'

But only one tower can tower unspeakably, terrifyingly high, all bone and no muscle, heart left out to let the wind in, no fat and no skin so you won't sway and snap in the Parisian breeze.