The light
alerts me:
strange shadows
skitter across my pages.
“It’s a fire”
cries from outside.
There the shadow play
turns ominous.
Sooty clouds obscure
the sun’s face,
pass, are replaced.
Flames lick the blue
belly of the sky.
A homebody, walls and roof, burns.
Sirens screech red,
fill our street.
I stand at the edge
spectator of disaster.
Today I am
the girl who wishes she had a poem,
the one who discovers Jill Krementz’s photos of poets
who recognizes so many faces, friends
from Dodge Poetry Festivals,
who finds as the photos scroll to the final frame:
Adam Zagajewski died last month.
Today I am
remembering my first reading of Zagajewski’s poem, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”
in the New Yorker, after the towers fell,
behind a stark black cover I had to study closely
to discern its secret,
and Zagajewski’s words “the light”
“gentle” —I forgot
“strays”— that, too,
but ” vanishes and returns”
echoing, echoing, echoing.
Today I am.
(Thanks to Janet Wong’s poem: “Today I Am.”)
Jump off; Find Wings 