Photo by Kristin Hiler

Kate’s Fifteen   /15

 

What was lost beneath the concrete

and steel was not the sunlight or the season.

They had known darkness before, as had the seeds,

as had all the smallest particles,

as had time.

 

When the urge to prove the dictates of man

swept across the plains of Asia, out of the

East and West, the skyscrapers fell,

one by one, replacing what had once been

free for the asking.

 

Who knew the difference between bravery

and humility, between knowing more

and knowing it wisely, between the stone

and the shadow and the words used to pry

them loose from an afternoon which

they would soon forget

and which was etched on their faces.

 

Rocks turn to sand, sand to rock.

The ashes of the instant, the smoking gun,

the metaphor on which the moment hinges,

Sun in the eyes of the most intrepid traveler

all speak in a voice of pounding surf,

or mountain storms, in the smoky haze

which for the pilgrim means success

or spells surcease.

 

The mountains tumble, the old highway cracks

between freeze and thaw, between the fingers

of time, before the voice which gives command

to all sunlight and the seed hidden beneath.

 

On that day, nothing will be different

but man will be different.

He will not understand the clicking

sounds and he will not write about it

in strophies or with rhyme.

 

15.