stop

When those towers came down,
cities stopped to consider
they could be next. Their
absence centered conversations
in streams of Michigan Avenue pedestrians
hurrying half a continent away, away.
          Four years later, every train in Chicago
is on a heightened state of security, but only
newscasters speak of Louisiana, Biloxi,
Gulfport, not to mention nameless
stretches of Gulf coast where nobody
lives but nobodies who own no cars, too lonely
to have somewhere else to go. People worry
about the cost of gas, some pompous ass
writes that New Orleans struggles
against Nature and should not
be rebuilt like Chicago, San Francisco,
Hiroshima after their fires.
                         I suppose
he lives in the shadow of those towers
and their siblings in St. Louis. Which cities
missed a step when they came down? A god
with a twisted sense of humor might read
the Tribune and give New Madrid
a shake. One god, they say,
swore off floods with rainbows; but
that one, who never has liked towers, is
prone to repentance and known to forget. A prophet
would tell you to stop at that while god counts
cattle lost in New Orleans.