THE FALLING MAN [9/11]

The topmost storeys burn, blacking out the sun
Like a Hell in Heaven; a flaming sword,
A sky-clad firebrand .........

Too late -
He has no choice.
The downward stairs are blocked;
The tower sways: whole floors ablaze.
Like shrill blades the screams of others cut the frenzied atmosphere
To shards.
They surge, as a hive-mind
Crushing him to the quaking wall;
The cracking windows bow and shatter
As wind like howling demons rushes in;
Asphyxiating fuel drenches, creeps .........ignites -
Then, like a pyroclastic flow it conquers all.

The windowledge -
His only refuge left in all the world.
Above the grasping hands he climbs,
Imploring of the blue September sky:
"Dear God!" he cries -
As downward-looking into the crevasse of No-man's void
He wonders what devil has brought his world to this.
The red-hot metal brands his clutching hands
With the stigmata of sacrifice;
He stands, he gasps,
He prays ..........and yes,
There is a choice:
To perish in the black inferno with those trapped behind;
Or cast off - defiant in this evil's face to meet a swifter doom.
He weeps in resignation ..... thinks of his family ........
As he fondles their names with his trembling lips.
Then he jumps -
-'Flies' -
Falls ........

Compassionate air relieves his choking lungs with one last brevity
Of life;
Then he feels the merciless magnet of the Earth.
Heaven has no wings to give him
Nor respite from inevitable pull,
Pitilessly impelling him
Through searing billows of glass-daggered smoke
Roiling in the fractured air -
Already blazoned with the souls
Of the newly dead.

It seems a million windows pass him by;
Terror, tangible, shrieks out from every one;
Shadows spin and hurtle,
Raining from the sky
Along with him.
Does he know that for his last few heartbeats
He is not alone?

His body, fast-forwarding downward
Spears through a vertical vortex,
Plummeting, flailing,
Helplessly accelerating,
But numbly, dumbly
Stunned -
Years become miliseconds
As his mind winds retrograde
Through flashing zoetropes
Of former days, months ...... decades,
Lifetimes long forgotten,
They swirl and play again
Detracting from the panic of his fall.
- They say it takes ten seconds of Eternity
From the hundred-and-ninth floor
To oblivion.

The scorching, tortured air
Twisting, surging upwards,
Rips from his lips the desperate words
Of his futile prayer
Before the breath of his last farewell
Could follow them ............

Then all sounds cease.
All light
dies.
Time
stops.
Annihilation
slams
the
tunnel
door
.
.
.
.
.

* * * * *

*
Five feet away he stands,
So lightly stands,
And looks upon himself, his end, his doom;
Sprawling, broken on the bloody ground -
This mangled man who once was he.
And yet ............
No fear, no pain; only calm, so deep
That now he feels the sorrow of the sun,
The anguish of the Earth,
The pity of the sky that still looks on.

He turns around to leave that place -
Ground Zero -
And walks with others who have perished in the fray.
Unscathed by any fire or fall they go,
So lightly go
From Ground Infinity
Into the bright Hereafter,
Following the Truth of higher things ..........
The warring world will bear the imprint of this day;
Who knows where noble spirits meet when called away?