Universe In Black

Two doors. Darkness leading to darkness. You appear. I ask what happened, you were to come earlier. You say you did. You came as a Mexican cockatoo. Other times you were a sunset in a Lorca poem or a lost storekeeper seeking flags of unknown countries. No-fly zones empty the sky above my Soho loft. Fireflies in my Pennsylvania hometown have turned off their lights out of respect. Is it the second coming? Is something terrible slouching across the desert? In my hometown, the Susquehanna yawns a yawn of memory. In New York City, the World Trade Center can be seen in shadows of new construction. I plant a rosebush in my window box. It grows pale. Shopkeepers have taken to selling glass souvenirs that, when shaken, drop snow over the dead twins. This is post-war Manhattan. The dead aren't dead. They can be seen over their desks, flirting at water fountains, talking on the phone to their children. Misery shadows nearby colleges, the Hudson River, bicycles speeding up the West Side Highway. The college where I teach, once the temporary morgue, continues. Grief is only a lesson. But even palm trees can implode upward. Fruit can rot at the top, danger appear as a cockatoo. I breathe in the bodies of the dead still. Their ash is on my clothes and in my desk. In the Caribbean, blackbirds gnaw at the flamingo's leg - the one he uses to stand on all night - that leg his solitary meditation. A woman of alabaster swims in crystal water to the green Isle of Esmeralda. This porcelain girl will grow up to buy glass globes that snow, but the fire will never go out. She will not know how lucky she is. But when she sees the one-legged flamingo, she will know something is growing in lot 911, in the county of Manhattan, in the USA. It is necessary to look at what still stands.