I visited Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan today
to see if poetry had taken root, like fireweed,
among the cracks in the rubble and the dead.
Instead I heard the voice of a friend
Who reminded me that
the study of death
and dying teaches
nothing.
And so I stood, empty handed,
again, without the grace
to give
or receive.
For dVerse Poetics
qbit 
Awesome, Mr. q! Perhaps your friend knows something about death and dying. 🙂 We all can learn from your poem — come empty-handed and wait. I really like the way this is written.
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We get by with a little help from our friends. 🙂
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q Ringo.
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Nice!
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Excellent piece!
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Thank you!!
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“to see if poetry had taken root, like fireweed,
among the cracks in the rubble and the dead.
Can this be any more intense? I think not. It’s one of those descriptions I wish I had written. As to learning from death and dying–I can’t agree with your friend. But, then, that’s been my life’s work!
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Victoria – thank you so much. That is quite a compliment!
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A poignant final stanza.
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Yes..some things just leave us cold.
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… lots to ponder. Can’t decide how I feel about it…
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Me either.
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it evokes an empty vacuum of aloneness for me. i feel sorry it was so
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Interesting poem. I enjoyed your reference to fireweed which is the first to come back after a fire!
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and we continue to seek even though we know it will all tell us nothing, you use the desolation of ground zero so well to emphasize the emptiness of death after a raging fire
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We visited Ground Zero back in 2002 and marvelled at the messages attached to the fence. Yes, it would be lovely to know that ‘poetry had taken root, like fireweed, among the cracks in the rubble and the dead’. Sometimes, though, there is just nothing we can say and we must learn to be comfortable with our empty-handedness.
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Thanks for taking us back there. Perhaps we learn nothing of death but the remembrance is a fire of its own, like the poem, and burns enough to lamp at least the portal.
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I imagine it is always possible and worth waiting for, as the theme suggests, for something to appear, unexpectedly even, allowing one to give and receive again.
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That’s a very thoughtful comment. Much appreciated.
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I really love this piece… death cannot teach us anything, it’s like gathering ash.
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Thank you, I like the way you put that.
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Fire of Give or Take
Human
Hands
Ember… Reach Out..:)
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I love this piece q. It’s beautiful and sad.
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Thank you!
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Wow. What a beautiful piece. Death teaches us nothing, yet it is so hard to let go. And let “it” go. Thank you for sharing this.
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Thank *you*!!
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A memorial of a tragedy that leaves one small and speechless.
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I had to look up Chamaenerion angustifolium.
Then I had to wonder if thanatologists would agree with you or your friend.
LOL
Classic Q : Rorschackian vague.
I read comments to see how this affected the average reader (wink).
My comment.
There is no “Death”, a capital “D” of course.
Now studying ways of living and the way things kill, that may be more hopeful than studying the way thing die perhaps.
Waiting for meaning in the emptiness is natural.
I have seen a video of elephants returning to sites that one of their children died year after year and turning over the bones again and again. The dualistic illusion is deep in our circuitry it seems. Ghost in the machine.
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“Average reader” — LOL! And waiting/hoping for meaning when such just might not exist. I do indeed like watching the Rorschach effect of my poems.
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It is the anthropologist and psychologist in you.
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We learn nothing. Bigger buildings and memorials do nothing for me. Every time I pass that site on a bus, I try to look the other way.
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