Saturday, September 10, 2011

Earthquakes, Wildfires, Hurricanes and 9/11 (10th Anniversary)


It is 9/10/11.
It is the Eve.

Don't crowd me.
Don't tread on me.

Very restless, all week.
Grieving, choked up, tearful
Over the slightest thing.

And just the other day,
Almost the same one as,
Six years ago, a first-in-living-memory
Earthquake hit this city.

Although without aftershocks (knock on wood!), not a Japanese-scale
Catastrophe, this seizure hit just as I crossed the courtyard
To the Asian buffet and it was quaking below our feet
But we all looked up, up, up, as if this shuddering was a new
assault on the capitol, perhaps cracking the Pentagon open
Again, like a lobster dinner plate,
Just over there, across the Potomac.

Within hours, not one but two tropical storms converged.
We were danced upon, shaken as if by heavy layers of god-size
Dancing full skirts of rain -- right when we were drying our
Moldy towels and socks, after the also
Recent tropical Irene dance party ...

No, this was not the worst you could do,
This was not a Gulf oil spill, but harrowing
Enough, the booming black bolts of thunder,
The jumbo spiders of ice-white lightning
Day and night, the flying skirts of rain --

Flushing the downhill neighbor's massive tree
To the ground, flooding the uphill neighbor's
Basement with force enough that it split
The house foundations.

So, comparatively briefly,
Our ground has recently shaken
And we have been royally rocked
And soaked to our riven foundations.

Oh, and, as sun and heat return,
As the ongoing Texas firefight seems
Never likely to end, this anniversary approaches.

Like the cat feet of a storm, in print,
Onscreen, in morphing memory -- come the recurring
nightmare visions of the two towers falling,
Of people falling (poignant as flowers),
Falling, from the falling towers.

Also, although it may not make it into history books,
Three days before my date of birth, precisely seven days
Before 9/11/11, I returned after more than a decade
To a man of few words: the surgeon thief who stole my innocence.

That is, I was yanked from a thing known to me
As my life and forced to re-visit a specialist who twice before
Sliced into my right foot, repairing and spoiling it forever.

True, after not many weeks, stitches heal,
Crutches will go. I was and again will be thankful.
I will not walk with a Caribbean pirate's limp.
I will slip that foot without pain
Into my sensible librarian's shoe.
I will forgive and forget.
Nonetheless, I will as well (I know)
Dream of reunion with my intact foot,
In heaven. It waits for me in heaven,
The good old foot I never had.
I know.

Notes to self. Now, know this: the terror god
Of wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes and failing feet
Cannot be humbled or questioned, not tortured, executed,
Or bombed. God will not tell us his/her accounting methods,
Will never be held accountable.

Know this: in the alphabets of retribution and/or reconciliation,
A never skips to Z or proceeds to B directly, confidently,
Just like that, in a snap.

It seems (from where I sit, with right foot
Above my heart) that on a different footing,
Studying alternate repetitions of footage,
We could uncover and might arrive at

A true response to 9/11.