Nine Eleven O’One

Billowing palisades, pewter airfalls

            Cascade in slow motion

                        Overflowing the fountain of commerce

                                    Graceful to the eye, hideous to the heart

People, hundreds

            People, one by one

                        Living lives, forecasting futures

                                    Nine, eleven, o’one

Soft tarnished silver clouds

            Enfold those potentials

                        Tattered remnants of lives

                                    Spewed into the Manhattan morning

Elegant grotesque plumes

            Gently tumble one over another

                        Spirits ripped from bodies

                                    Turning the shells to ash

Is there a torture more absolute

            Moment by moment terror

                        Smelling the hot acrid breath of death

                                 As it approaches their prison in the sky?

Does hope flee quickly

            Or does it leak slowing

                        From the corners of their eyes

                                    As the dusk of life turns to night?

written on a plane to Seattle 9/21/01.