I Will Wake Again In Darkness

Another Boeing slouches homeward

Wind-blown as a drunkard’s ramble,

Its amber eyes pale the Ganges night,

Its tiger roar bursts my reverie.

How could such fat geese spear harmless landmarks?

Cast them in our arms like dying buddies,

Bleeding flame, smoke and cinder ash,

Weeping people like all too heavy tears.

Monsters, victims and heroes alike:

Unbiased, the rubble buried all of them.

A step pyramid had to be cut out in negative to bare them,

Bear them tenderly away, their bearers swearing sacred payback.

Short of breath from heartfelt hard labor to retrieve the dead:

Family by blood, by friendship, as perished first responders,

Or the innocent flesh of unknown victims.

The embers of those buildings, ash mixed with who knows what;

Those sturdy, broad-chested bearers,

That hellish dust ate them up.

They had to rejoin all too soon the ghosts they’d eased to rest.

Will these harsh fall daybreaks draw us back into the warmth,

Revenant from dead winter, as foretold?

And will sweet May breezes soothe fevered temples

Five times a day, as at prayer?

So that all may stand tall,

Above all, the children, their head held high.

A shy smile on their lips, perhaps,

Eyes agleam and heart in bloom.

I will wake again in darkness and make up my quiet bed,

The way a night-dropped agent would bundle up his parachute

And stretch an ear for shadow friends.