In September of the Year 2000
I was sharing a business lunch
with a friend from the U.S. EPA
at Windows On The World at
The Word Trade Towers in NY.
We were worried about the filth
filling the air over our country,
talking among the clink of silver.
In September of the Year 2001
where we were sitting was lost
along with my friend’s ashes in
the acidic clouds over our country.
It is September of the year 2020
and I am writing half a continent away
from those broken towers. I have seen
the cities come back after wars and I believe
pandemics too will pass and the cities come back.
We are built of the iron structures
we encase ourselves in, whether words
or the metal bars others build around us
from the bright things we believe in.
There is no greater song on our earth than
that of winter winds roaring over mountains.
I think of this as I power up my chainsaw
to cut the logs that will warm my cabin this winter
a long way from the city I grew up in, the east
coast city where my children took their first breaths.
The timbers cut clean and strong smelling.
The night is dark, and I look to stars.
What is the distance between a supernova and
the first cry of a child coming into our world?
There is a deep, deep lake atop this mountain
which descends to a hardened volcanic plug
above the magma that gave rise to all
these forests and fields and paths I walk each day,
and the stream that flows from that lake
waters the flowers that grow along the valley
that runs by my door and then out into
the open fields where crops grow to be shipped
from the fires of the earth which fed them
and the ice-cold peak of this mountain and down
into our thriving cities. This is a link in reality,
and a metaphor I walk each day. Come with me.
What is the distance between a supernova
and the streetlamps that line our cities?
What is the distance between a nova star
and the magma that roils beneath our feet?
What is the distance between a nova star
and the icy fields we draw our waters from,
the granite bedrock upon which we build our cities,
the iron hammers we wield to build machinery and weapons,
the marble and gold and statuary we haul across our history?
What is the power that lets us walk together
and think upon these things?
