A Tree in a Forest, a Human in a Town

For all your walls, you are permeable,
Incontrovertibly convertible,
An enormous fortress of a bazaar,

A complex of continuous exchange
Of what you were for what you turned just now,
A knot of perpetual replacement

Of every particle of moving parts,
Until exchanges clog or walls collapse.
Meanwhile, you haunt your trade, a haze produced

Like smoke hovering over your markets,
A byproduct of their activity,
An uneasy, ragged flag visible

From the walls of every other fortress
Churning under its haze, never at rest.