(Part VI.)
This is morning
The sun rises again
this is morning
and there’s an alien sound
in the Hopkins corridor,
all too familiar
it is intrusive and huge
as I shower
pre dawn Wednesday
like I can wash it all away.
On the bus ride, the first of two to work,
there is vague, grumbled conversations
about killing Pakistanis, and Afghanis.
There is vague conversation about war.
Something catches my eye while I’m waiting
for the #6 Euclid on Public Square,
a distant, nearly imperceptible light
probably 10 miles or more up in the sky.
Military? Satellite? Everything is a no – fly zone.
The chalky emptiness of downtown is eerie,
and a portent of things to come.
This is mourning,
inky and slow to rage,
just a long, slow, angry simmering
in our race - less faces.
Submitted by conect11 on 4 June 2007 - 10:10pm.
Style / Type:
freeform
(1 vote)
re: Poem
Thanks for the comment, Joe! The poem should be read in the context of being part six of my poem “Last Tuesday.” This part was about the morning after, and how I was taken aback because I heard a very large airplane while I was taking a shower. (the entire U.S. was a no - fly zone, and we live on the main approach to Hopkins airport.) It’s also about the faces of ordinary people on the bus in the morning on their ways to work that day, and the grumblings of war and revenge that most of us spoke.