Reading Ground Zero
A river of souls in the early dark
is streaming toward the PATH,
blocking mine, and inside a veil of blue
hung on the chainlink fence is
another fence, and around it
some still-tall buildings rise,
and scaffolding that's new but could be
the burnt remnants into which the rest of it
ripped loose and sank.
Sparks fly up inside the fence
in the dark and the next morning
November bloom plum flowers go off
around the 9/11 monument where I stand
outside my New Jersey
corporation. The grommets
clang gently against the flagpole
in the breeze, scrappy shrubs
diminished around its base.
—Molly Weigel, Pennington, NJ
