AN UNHEALING WOUND
(Or Everything To Do With 9/11)
We are for/ the most part ignoring/the extraordinary events taking place/all around us in field & woodlot, /in the air , & soil & water/from which we are knit. /…My father/will wash the dishes./We will each slice open/& remove the inedible stone from/a dead-ripe peach.---From “This Poem Has Nothing to Do With 9/11” by Dave Bonta, posted 09-08-11 in Via Negativa.
Will the Hollow find itself
agog by cackling heralds?
They’re out early in the City:
something’s jumped out
of Cassandra’s mayhem box.
Are there more twin towers
in their target sights? None?
Perhaps, the monuments
then: the Lincoln Memorial,
the black leader’s white house.
While we peel our morning
peaches, pare off their stones
from dead-ripe cores, or sip
our porch tea like we always
do (without requisite gravity),
we quietly talk about how
much more can we rant about
a decade’s unhealing wound
as if there were not enough
havoc in water, earth, or air
from the hurts inflicted on
valleys, seas, quarries, even
hearts and minds, to hasten
a deferred apocalypse wilder
still than we can ever imagine.
How much longer can a scare
out there stifle what must
disturb us inside into wakeful
dread? As umpire of a global
game of wealth and destruction,
should we not be talking really
about how long it would take
before players run us down
for playing one against another
in guiles to divide and conquer?
It could be too late for that.
Even friends, abiding friends,
have learned to shrug off the cold
air as they sip their morning tea,
ignoring prattle of more towers.
---Albert B. Casuga
09-09-11
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