Normal has been redefined.
Now we move through everyday life
thinking about life, every day,
each minute a ripened fruit.

Senses have sharpened –
we regard the world with warier eyes
while finely tuned to frequencies:
ear to the sky, the jet overhead.

We stand at tense attention
like veldt-dwellers,
watching on all sides
for predators in the grass.

Our vantage point,
our strange and somber advantage,
a small mountain
still burning below,

framed with steel skeletons,
built from two hundred crumpled stories
and thousands buried
without ceremony or warning.

It gives us a place
from which to move on,
and the benefit of hindsight
from higher ground.

09/29/2001

Posted on 09/29/2001
Copyright © 2024 Bruce W Niedt