Lamentation
by Christine Rodgers

The fog
has never seemed
more
like ash.

The thick white
ash that coats
the whole of New York.

Perhaps
it is the ash

traveling
all this way
to keep us
in solidarity.

A shroud of solidarity.

All I know is this --

I wake up
each morning
to a sunless sky

and the news
is still
true.

September 2001

Absence
by Christine Rodgers

Things are missing now.

I can hear those children crying
in the night
whose parents have disappeared.

So many tears -- a whole river
of tears dissolving whatever
remains hard in us.

May we speak softly now?
May we whisper, for the sake of the children?

What is this long shadow lingering
over the world?
Is it because we cannot forgive?

The morning dove leaves the nest, finally
because nothing is growing.
She takes the warmth of her belly somewhere else.
And the unhatched eggs
harbor no resentment.

They understand that she must go.

We must all go -- at last -- into another place.
There is no choosing there.
But how -- how we go is still ours.
It is possible to go with a soft heart.

To fly from the nest fully aware
that life is somewhere else.
A discovery of life released
in the tender moment of death.

September 2001