in memoriam

once there was a rainbow

On the tenth anniversary, I’ll travel to New York,

to Manhattan near Ground Zero.

I’ve been there before

just after dust and ashes settled

atop resting heaps the Towers were.

Quiet came to me there

at the edges of the Trade Center, its

fenced in confines,

a cemetery where bodies were buried

without markers.

My nephew worked near there that day,

near enough to see death and destruction

reveal their fatal display.

He felt it. He saw it. He tasted its color.

All of it was gray.

American gray.

Manhattan gray.

A gray he hears when I ask him to meet me there.

B. Koplen 9/9/11