Silent sky

The day looked undecided and hardly aware of itself.Sky trying to be gold,defused with grey and streaked with darker colors.Wind.Warm?Or Cold? The creaking sound of hinges on a bashed in dumpster,an arm rising above it's rim,tossing out some of it's contents,a white mass of something.Squirrel passing along the wire above.First one of the day maybe,moving west,looking desperate to hold his footing.Yellow,blushing crab apples lying on the cracked alley pavement,so sour even the squirrels ignore them,treaded underfoot turning to mash and reeking,an accent to the mash from the distillery carried on wind with the dust from the mill that always fouls the air.

It happened slowly at first.Gathering up the breakfast dishes and listening to the radio.Not listening really,but it's on.Always.Traffic,commercials,I can't remember them now.And a plane has fallen,out of the sky where no plane should be.They always fly out over Harlem,don't they? Well,it must have been a small plane hopelessly lost.Rinse off grease spots from a plate.Toss a grapefruit rind into the trash.Do I need to take it to the dumpster?No,not yet.Open up the window a bit.Wind is cool.It could rain.But by evening the apartment will be a hellbox because my window faced south.Bottle pickers shuffling down the alley.Nasty blue shirt with half the collar torn away.The day looked undecided.

And then another,and we knew.The first though:it's my nephews birthday today.There's a fly on the wall.Make the bed?No,stay and listen instead.Save the few minutes and hear the radio.Magpies squabbling outside.Is the window cracked too far.They will fly up onto it's sill,then inside to shit on the floor.Radio is in chaos now,no more commercials,nobody cares about traffic.Announcer takes us to New York.But details are still sketchy.Out the door and off to work.The day seems different,though not enough minutes have passed.Quiet.Stony silent inside the train as it moves out southbound.The day looked undecided,and all the people knew it.Sunshine or storm?And what would it be like if today was your birthday?

Working in the dim heat of a depot,sorting bottles.There's a television in the lunchroom and I catch a quick glimpse in the minute or two before my shift begins,pulling on thick rubber gloves,so as to not injure my hands and have them covered in blood.No need to linger.These images will take up forever,and the world is different now.Boss is a Sikh man and he laments,"The world will blame us.Because we wear turbans. " There's a turbaned man on the television set,a dark looking,foreboding man,he looks more like a shadow.

Clink of bottles,stench of sour beer,rattle of coins,pickers cart.Broken glass and paper under foot.Some spoiled liquor stuck to the floor,sticking to my feet,trying to draw my shoes away,off of my feet.And the television drones.You can hear it now from anywhere in the shop,because someone has turned it up.We started the day talking of other things,co-workers,customers,like any other day,but it changed.No other conversation,just the one thing,and there is a fear in every voice now.You can't escape it,it cannot be hidden.

I used the planes to tell me where I am in the city.I knew their glide slopes better than the streets.But there are no planes in the sky.And that's what I remember most.And I turned my mind to a verse about signs and wonders in the heavens.I didn't know it's exact wording,I'd have too look it up.

And I was dumping garbage outside,into a dumpster.Broken bottles.Lock the back gate because even here the bottle pickers would break in and scatter the contents looking for a single can or bottle.Or maybe a place to sleep.They might even come in through the back door,looking for a windfall.The dumpster reeked like a vomit factory and a handful of wasps and hornets hovered about ever malevolent sucking in the tiny drops of spoiled liquor.Kahlua and Coors and Jaggermiester and some thick dark wine.Peaches.And an apple core fallen onto the pavement,bitten once or twice.And the ants seetheed over it,hornets swarmed to devour it.A City On The Hill.

And going home.A boy hawks extra editions of the paper at the train station.It's the first time I've ever seen an extra edition in any place except film noir gangster movies.I was forty,and just found that single day of my time,our generation,the will live in infamy.What would it be like if today were your birthday?Undecided.Just another day maybe,or something tainted and ruined? Undecided.

The sky was silent and vacant.The only things there were the things that really belonged there and it was such a foreign thought.From the window of the train I watched a hawk circle,on the hunt for small creeping things.A crow on the fence post,taking flight.Sparrows gathered on the platform looking for crumbs.Jays and magpies waiting to chase off the sparrows.Flies and gnats and a butterfly.And the sky was so quiet,because no man ventured there.There were no wonders in the heavens and the silence was a great unmeasured weight.I'd never known a day without planes.

I though of The Tower Of Babel,that night,like I'd never thought about it before,in that Ancient land that you knew was going to be laid to ruin,once the silence passed and the days were not so undecided.And The City On The Hill was my first waking thought the day after.Because man was at root so disobedient and uncaring.Even the good ones,even the best sometimes longed for the destruction of others,even those building upon higher ideals.And I though a thought of fallen towers,and of an endless sea of black bodies chained together and of That Great Lady in the harbor,in smoky air.America has an unpaid debt,I thought,and it's coming due.

blyndpapaya
GOD BLESS AMERICA...IN MEMORY,9/11