The Falling Man

No one is sure who he is, but it is believed he was a worker
from Windows on the World;
he was one of many who fell or chose to jump to avoid the inferno

I

The morning of September 11 I awoke from a dream, a strange dream. It was later than I would normally rise; I was on a teaching sabbatical and taking courses during the ’01 and ’02 school year. It was wonderful not having to get up at the usual 5:15 a.m. I had a course in the early evening and here it was about 8:00 a.m. What should have been a delicious feeling was an odd feeling in my gut.

I had just dreamed: I was back in my old classroom as a teacher looking out the window at George Willig who was scaling the World Trade Center Building. He was ascending into the clouds. Little did I know that in moments there would be another kind of ascension.

I got up, put on the coffee, turned on the computer and checked my mail. Shortly after 8:45 there was an incomprehensible blurb on my AOL welcome screen.   A plane had flown into the tower. There it was. I called a  friend who was at work. I sat in disbelief. My husband called screaming, crying, he had watched the second plane hit from the roof of his school in Brooklyn. I called my friend back and turned the TV on; I watched the first of the towers implode, and I remember saying to my friend on the phone, “The world will never be the same.”

My neighbor from across the street was working construction in the lower Manhattan  area. He came home in shock.“Sue,” he said as the brilliant sun blinded us on a perfect day, “there were people falling, jumping, hitting the canopy, the street, falling on other people. Body parts.”  And then I realized as my hand flew to my mouth, that I wasn’t just smelling the odor of burning wires and rubber, an odor that persisted for weeks. I was breathing the odor of humanity.

And the dust.The dust lingered in and on everything, everywhere, for months. It came into our homes, into our lungs. We breathed the dead, they were lodged in us. We were all one.

II

During my sabbatical I was writing in the English Department and attempting to learn digital imaging in the Art Department. The events of 9/11 colored my school year. I wrote several pieces and produced a digital art piece with twenty-two layers that consisted of newspaper clippings, antique wood cuts and line drawings, book illustrations, and photos of art. The Tomb of the Medici actually has 2 tower-like projections stemming up the back which reminded me of the twin towers.

What had struck me deeply were the makeshift bulletin boards that grew around hospitals, on walls, on anything that could support a picture of a missing loved one. It was tragic. The wallpaper of the missing looked like the detritus that had blown out of the buildings’ windows upon impact; they covered surfaces like a dragon’s scales, sharp, painful and uneven.

I chose several faces from these walls for my art piece. They represented the hundreds—thousands of dead and missing. Two young women, and a young man, smiling for the camera, fearless, hopeful, invincible. Clipped from the New York Times.

Some months after I completed this piece I turned on the evening news. At that time there was something daily about the horrific event; people were still missing and some would never be found, but we couldn’t wrap our minds around that.

On the television screen, a mother was crying holding the picture of her daughter pleading for someone to come forth and tell her that her daughter was safe; she refused to believe she was gone.

Her daughter was one of the faces that I had chosen for my collage. The one on the right.

I wanted to send it to her but life distracted me. I lost track, didn’t know how to find her, forgot which station I was watching. But I want her to know her daughter is safe and always will be.

On my page.

III

Poetry

Reflections on Broken Glass I

(Villanelle)

I saw this, I saw it all:
The reduction, the demise, the hell, the dust,
I know the horror, the collapse, the fall.

From planes aloft, received the call,
The quick ,”good-byes,” now lives adjust,
I saw this, I saw it all.

The planes slammed,
then a fireball, turns the rubble to a crust;
I know the horror, the collapse, the fall.

I see the replay, I know the appall,
Weeping is my only must,
I saw this, I saw it all.

In body bags, the short, the tall.
The carcasses of cars now rust,
I know the horror, the collapse, the fall.

The enemy lurks, so brazen, such gall,
I fear the end of time once just,
I saw this, I saw it all,

I know the horror, the collapse, the fall.

~

Reflections on Broken Glass II

(Villanelle)

He jumped, calmly he dropped,
One of six thousand fifty-five missing people
Head first and disappeared.

The fireball wrought gray dust,
Quartz, sand, glass, souls:
He jumped, calmly he dropped.

What choice was there, oh Lord,
for the 30 or more facing immolation?
Head first and disappeared.

The indelible image, the work clothes,
Dark pants, white shirt, tie,
He jumped, calmly he dropped.

A young doctor opened the body bag
And recoiled at the pieces,
Head first and disappeared.

Forever with me the image,
That vision; sacred life-death moment, when,
He jumped, calmly he dropped,
Head first and disappeared.

~

What I Heard On The Morning News

A young doctor opened the body bag
and said,
“Oh, my God.”
She wasn’t prepared for the leg, the pelvis
the penis,
the raw intestines,
the pants pocket
that once held a wallet, an identification, faces,
A life. Someone said:
“Another part of him came in earlier
with his cell phone.”

Holding Hands

Women
Dropped
Holding hands,
In twos,
Like they did in the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911:
But in those days, buildings did not have 110 floors.

~

Pine Barren

(published on-line on Poetry.com)

©1/02

In the heart of Manhattan

on a cold Sunday afternoon,

I looked up to the sky,

which was blue,

and cut viciously,

by the corner of

a white residential tower.

It was an Edward Hopper moment:

There was the visage

of a window on the top floor,

south corner,

with its eye blind

to the sun,

perhaps asleep in midday,

the covers pulled over its head

taking a nap,

having a disorienting

dream,

the kind midday sleep yields.

Or perhaps trying to retreat to sleep

and hide from a painful memory.

Above the window,

on the roof

was a tree,

perhaps a pine

as it was green

but thin and

scraggly from the waist up

and bent to the north

as far as it could go

without snapping,

away from a horrible wind

blowing up

from Manhattan’s

southern desert.