Photografic Negative

*I wrote this shortly after the FIRST Twin Tower bombing (NOT 9-11)
and reflects an actual experience. I found it today, and I'm posting it because I find it refreshing that things do change, but I also find it disturbing to realize what brought about the change. I have yet to write about 9-11. Emotions cut far too deeply still for me to write about it. I need to, and I will...

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Photographic Negative

Winter's numbing cold, indifferent
to cast off dreams and day old news,
freeze into a stop-frame photo.
Rank measured by Sts. & Aves.,
the tombed towers march in endless monotony.
Ice-encrusted curbs blend to grey as
granite stoops, cracked and grumbling, lie under
greasy windows: shuttered eyes blocking out/in
the colorless profanity of existence.
Anonymous identities
hide behind molded masks
until such tragedy erupts to blast
the shields aside;
threatening to topple
the city towers like so many dominoes.
In the stark relief of a photographic negative,
the people return
and the personalities come out
for a time.
Then, scared, they retreat
into their tunnels and burrows,
safe in the darkness; hidden, hiding.

A windblown page of a city newspaper
lands, flattened on the hood
of a newly stolen/stripped car:
Twin Towers Bombing, story on page five.