The huge band of black smoke broadens
Against an azure sky, how limitless grief.

No numbers yet number the dead, not ten-
Or thirty thousand, the still uncounted souls

Buried in a tangle of steel, a sea of glass, shoes,
Pens and ash. Whose papers — the pieces of lives —

Flutter in the wind, rising with acrid smells
That feel their blind way into our living room,

The eye-stinging scent of death? Yesterday,
The dark gray of pigeons gliding on a cloud,

Glinted silver in my net. That gray repeats, color
Of death, blown by great hatred, Satan’s breath.

This poem was published in The Pedestal Magazine in 2001.

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