Gray bands of smoke are still alive.
    CNN revisits ash. I don't resist
    the black remote that
    whispered waking in my ear.
    Picnic benches near the towers
    are shards of limbs.
    Steel we thought we were we weren't.
    First waters of old liberties
    see seaweed strangling a pearl.

    Cranes are ticking dinosaurs
    reminding me to shave
    thick stubble of the hate
    before that final coat of rust.
    Ellis Island grows a layer of winter ice.
    The harbor hiccups with a ship.
    Every plane that passes in the autumn sky
    leaves bootprints on a nervous floor.

    Res gestae digs up poles for flags.
    I didn't know these palettes well.
    A songstress slumbering in streets
    between the stoplights stuck on red.
    Death rattles and we sing a hymn
    the best we can with thwarted lungs.
    Grief is always smelling salts,
    mace in eyes of apathy,
    seasoning on cantaloupe.

    They struck first, a chant that hangs
    like gnats on going bowls of fruit.
    We have trees of pears to pick.
    The missing call me from my sleep.
    The lives, the kisses, sugar cane,
    frozen sonnets of an iris
    bees will never bother with.
    Each ovary, each ivory moon,
    a stranger under lids of frost.
    Lovers they will never have
    become a ghost in vapor
    of November's fog.

Copyright © Janet I. Buck, 2002.  All Rights Reserved.