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(On the Anniversary of Your Death)
I never got the chance to walk through your windy plaza To gawk straight up like the tourist I would have been Another insignificant, adoring ant at your feet, Mental cartoon music describing your impossible height.
I never got to ride to your rooftop, wondering if I was feeling your swaying in the breeze, Or if it was my fevered, jet-lagged imagination adding suspense to your great size. I never got to do the Ferris Bueller thing, leaving my forehead print on your glass To be wiped away like the countless Ferrises before and after me.
I never got to sit at one of your beveled corners, ear to your gleaming wall, Wondering if I could hear your secret whispers to your twin nearby, Or take a step back and watch you turn into a metal Pyramid. I didn’t get to lean against you, and feel your power in my own small bones.
Instead, I got to know your many moods from afar Through countless photos, I watched you change From stacks of triplet bones, to a box- to a tower, and twinned Suffering through your gawky youth, then finding welcome in your city.
I saw your now-familiar visages in many movies, looking like ‘all that’. Watched people play with you- with parachutes and tightropes Climbing gear and clotheslines, and standing eggs on end in your plaza. Companion towers sprang around your feet like adoring children.
I saw you dress yourselves in sunsets, snow, fog, and clouds Sometimes green, sometimes golden, sometimes ghostly I saw your long shadows stretch in circles of the days and seasons Saw your windows sparkle and antenna glowing with quiet pride.
The TV screen was blurry with my tears for most of that awful day As they played, over and over again, the obscene agony of your deaths Looking like a Tarot Card writ large, hemorrhaging smoke, paper, and terrified people Finally blanketing around you with your dying pall.
Now your iron bones lay in twisted heaps An arcade of sorrow marking your falling Truck-by-truck, they took away what was left of you Then scattered your once proud steel around the world.
Even now, from the distance of a year It hurts to know that you both are forever gone Your absence is as awesome as your presence always was. Now I wonder, who there will kiss the dawn?
Sunfell 09/20/2002
Banner art by Aimee Brooks |
