Up, up
I lit a candle for you tonight.
You, you faceless thousands
hallowed in the lower Manhattan
lights, the night sky
striped twice,
while ten million wing-ed things
ferry your memories up,
up, ever up.
Were this my city then,
I would have navigated by
those two steel lines.
Were I a citizen
I’d begrudge my smashed compass
as I once begrudged
those sentinels,
those watchmen of power reaching up
up, hungrily up.
I shivered in the heat for you today.
For you, father, and your
near passing,
those chance slips through
that five-sided tomb.
Shivered for the stories
of men burning under their desks,
their hands crossed
over their heads,
clawing up,
up, mercilessly up.
It could have been you.
Were it not for your gray tenor
faltering over the phone
machine, I would have slept
restlessly, alone but not sound
in my little blue room.
But I stumbled toward your voice,
stumbled to my neighbor’s
home, and broke six years
of television abstention for
the horrors that still flood me
like a scream, swelling up,
up, chokingly up.
I marveled at your fortitude today.
You, you few, sure fellows
whispering from beyond
an indomitable black box.
What humanity was lost
and won in those terse moments,
your swan’s song?
What have we forgotten about
the waft of smoke billowing up,
up, hazily up
over a barn, a field,
then nothing.
Were my blood chased from
its pools, would I rise,
with it, to action?
Would I light the hearts of
a hundred selfsame passengers,
now driving down the aisle,
now barreling for that
forbidden door?
I waiver even still, but my
hope refuses to quell.
And so I look up,
up, ceaselessly up
for a day when
Eleven
means something better.
-KEA
9/11/07
You, you faceless thousands
hallowed in the lower Manhattan
lights, the night sky
striped twice,
while ten million wing-ed things
ferry your memories up,
up, ever up.
Were this my city then,
I would have navigated by
those two steel lines.
Were I a citizen
I’d begrudge my smashed compass
as I once begrudged
those sentinels,
those watchmen of power reaching up
up, hungrily up.
I shivered in the heat for you today.
For you, father, and your
near passing,
those chance slips through
that five-sided tomb.
Shivered for the stories
of men burning under their desks,
their hands crossed
over their heads,
clawing up,
up, mercilessly up.
It could have been you.
Were it not for your gray tenor
faltering over the phone
machine, I would have slept
restlessly, alone but not sound
in my little blue room.
But I stumbled toward your voice,
stumbled to my neighbor’s
home, and broke six years
of television abstention for
the horrors that still flood me
like a scream, swelling up,
up, chokingly up.
I marveled at your fortitude today.
You, you few, sure fellows
whispering from beyond
an indomitable black box.
What humanity was lost
and won in those terse moments,
your swan’s song?
What have we forgotten about
the waft of smoke billowing up,
up, hazily up
over a barn, a field,
then nothing.
Were my blood chased from
its pools, would I rise,
with it, to action?
Would I light the hearts of
a hundred selfsame passengers,
now driving down the aisle,
now barreling for that
forbidden door?
I waiver even still, but my
hope refuses to quell.
And so I look up,
up, ceaselessly up
for a day when
Eleven
means something better.
-KEA
9/11/07