Fall

In the promising light
of a cloudless morning
rich in symbol
in early September
a city's hidden vertigo
dances out between
rippling waves of heat
shaken
by improbable fire
and much more basic
imponderables
until
mirrored towers shiver
sway
tremble
lurch against gravity
like drunks
on their morning way
home
groan
then fall
to the curbstones
raining shattered glass
steel
and life
down to the streets
boiling chalky choking dust
out from the centre.

Dazed night falls too
as people pick
frantically
uncertainly
through the
still smoking shifting
heap
of what once was
for survivors
where there are none
under emergency lights.

That first night
at the edge of their glare
one camera's
recording eye
gropes blindly
past a billboard
from a
jauntier time
lost only hours before
still standing
impossibly
on the rim
of ground zero:
"A hit from
way
off Broadway..."