Once again, we find ourselves
in the valley of the shadow.
We are despised. Endangered.
There's no name. Just initials.
WTC. Numbers. 9/11.
In a matter of minutes,
thousands incinerated.

People who were 'there'
talk about the smell.
How the wind blew
dust in their hair
coated their throats.
Motes of DNA floating in the air.

This is not the Big H
though there's an echo.
Large scale murder,
the randomness of the dying,
we who are left
to carry on.

I go to Ground Zero
need to taste, smell it, photograph
the steel skeleton of a lost civilization
like survivors who return to Auschwitz
climb into the ovens,
collect ashes
to bury those with no graves.