I wrote this a handful of Septembers ago. Today feels like the day to share it.
YEARS LATER, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY
1. Airplanes
When they pass low, loom larger
than toy-size overhead, I breathe deep
and watch them across the sky until
their route confirms itself; southeast
descending to the airport, west and rising
over the Pacific, the everyday
predicted paths of flight. As if my gaze
compelled their altitude and bearings,
signaled them safe away from skyline,
bridges, horror; as if the act of bearing
witness – nothing taken for granted –
changes what happens, even when nothing does.
2. Dust
Made up mostly of human skin cells,
they tell us, with some street grit mixed in,
and while I flick a layer of my discarded self
from books, piano, desk, I wonder how the housekeepers
managed in that other city, all those weeks
when so much was discarded, when the street grit
was ashen, when every dust-cloth became
a reliquary, a memento mori.
3. Firehouse
Morning and night, on my way into
the world and on my way home, I pass
the two-engine house, its flagpole the tallest
elevation on our block, and when its flag
is at half-mast, I often know why; if not,
I tell myself to read the news more closely
for another story of fire (often) and courage,
for the name and last response of another
first responder. Some mornings, though, I picture
someone in that house waking in grey dawn light
on fire with memory, getting up before the others
to run the colors down to mourning-height,
then shivering in the smoke of early fog,
heading indoors again to start the coffee.
4. Distance
In 1989, last time the earth shook really hard
in San Francisco, I was camped two hundred miles
inland on the granite Sierras with my father and sister,
and when we came out of the hills to my father’s house
and heard the four day’s news of rubble, flames, a broken
bridge, my sister and I tossed dusty gear pell-mell
into her car, headed west and south and home as fast
as her good sense would let her drive – and, arriving, found
the normal city traffic, crumbled plaster and window glass
on my apartment floor, a small brave street-fair humming
outside, and everyone telling stories, the same ones,
over and over again.
Eighteen years later, when
my sister called me from our father’s house
to tell me where she had found his body and what
she had done next, and that there was no need
for me to catch a bus north, she would drive home
the next day – when we hung up, what I felt most,
of all there was to feel, was the wish to be there,
in a house I had never wished to visit while
my father lived, in case at this late date there might
be some need after all.
And though I have never
traveled to Manhattan, or toured the Pentagon,
or driven through Shanksville, though I know no one
who died that day those years ago, though being present
that day, God knows, would have changed
exactly nothing, still, then and odd days since,
I have watched myself standing quiet, a safe distance
from catastrophe, and longed for any skill,
any strength that might excuse my filling space
reserved for survivors, any witness to bear
to help them bear survival, any answer
for the unreasoned conviction that chokes
me like dust, flaps in my brain like a mourning flag:
I should have been there. I should be there now.
Copyright 2014 by the 26th Avenue Poet.
11:51 AM PT: Community Spotlight! Thank you so much, Rescue Rangers. I'm honored.
Fri Sep 12, 2014 at 5:25 PM PT: In case anyone reads this diary on Friday night or Saturday (however long it stays up in CS) -- I don't have internet access on the weekend, but I'll read and reply on Monday to any comment you choose to leave.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by. It's been a gift. -- Lize