80 Ash

Classes in Zen Buddhist sitting and walking meditation for beginners would be held at the Iowa Zen Center Heartmind Temple in Council Bluffs from 6:30 to 8:00 on five consecutive Thursday evenings beginning September 20. I filled out the short registration form I had clipped from the IZC newsletter Flat Land and mailed it in with my check. My wife Ruth had just begun her course of study for the degree Master of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Then—

Nine Eleven—

On September 11, nineteen fanatical Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four American passenger planes and crashed one into the Pentagon in Washington, one each into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and one into a field in Pennsylvania, killing approximately 3000 people. I was told what had happened by a former student as I was leaving my room after class at 10:00 and was walking slowly up the incline of the corridor to my office cubicle.

"Mr. Skank!" she exclaimed. "Have you heard?"

"What?"

With my student I walked to the library where the staff had arranged two television monitors in the reception area for public viewing. With a dozen other people, new viewers arriving as others left for class, I watched as reporters replayed tapes of the catastrophe again and again.

All that day and into the next we watched television.

Reality.

TV—

Finally Ruth insisted that she and I stop.

Instead, she suggested, we should throw our bikes into the bed of our pickup and drive up to DeSoto Wildlife Refuge, which had become our favorite refuge indeed. To this I consented and how glad I am that I did. Of our experience on that September 12 afternoon my wife wrote this poem.

Nine Twelve—

What we saw when we left our unharmed city, left our television

the day after: butterflies by the hundreds on white-flocked

weeds—all monarchs but one that spread open black

and blue. A hummingbird moth zipped from flower

to flower—how the wings too quick to see zebra-

striped the air. Over the river an osprey carried the dark

shape of a fish like a rudder against its chest.

A second and third surveyed, dived, and soared

to pinpoint distance. The first kingfisher plunged

and came up empty. Across the preserve another waited

in a low branch, pounced, and raised a kicking frog

to treetop. Great blue heron stood gray in shallow

water, craned their long necks into the air, moved

like statuary stalking. A swarm of swallows gleaned

fields and waters. Killdeer ran their pleading scripts.

Canadian geese honked away from us by threes and fives,

assembled in the river then lifted in tens and twenties,

glowed in the low sun then turned, rode loud and broken

Vs around the bend. Ducks squawked from the bank's tall grass.

Families of deer leapt across the road or gathered in clans, 

looked up from bales of graying hay or browning

rows of corn. Pelicans slid like giant rubber ducks. Puffs of white

floated in uncut blue until the burying of light streaked

orange and pink. Replayed over every scene, towers flared

and crumbled from our heads, gray ash, arms and legs—a sifting. 

Rescuers, officials, husbands and wives, daughters and sons, 

lovers, friends, neighbors, strangers searched—ants on the moon.