A View of These Colors

(On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at work, watching children play on a playground across the street from my Royal Oak office.  My mom called around 8:46 am to tell me about a plane hitting the World Trade Center.  We first thought it was the misfortune of a bad amateur pilot, but soon discovered that was not the case.  By the end of that fateful morning, the world had completely changed.  This poem is how I experienced that tragedy, and the fear that my family had lost a loved one to terror.)



These Colors

Blue sky, gold rays tease me
through a sterile gray window sill.
Gray textured walls, gray patterned carpet,
gray uncomfortable supposedly ergonomic chair.
I’m swaddled in gray so efficient,
so needed to keep my focus on work.

I defy the gray, let my eyes
gaze past the gray sill at
girls and boys awash in red plaid
playing in the school yard across the
asphalt gray street, enjoying an
existence absent of gray until
bells ring – their class, my phone –
and a lone red light blinks warming up
a smoke gray handset.

Mom’s burnished honey chuckle
pours through my speaker as
childlike laughter fades away into a
warm honey brick building,
their fun free play fades
into a full day of lessons as
I skip away from work to a quick call.

"Did you hear a plane hit the Trade Center?"

I chuckle too as Mom and me
picture scenes of aged silver:
Harold Lloyd dangling in the air above a crowd,
straw hat still mischievously in place.
King Kong flicking away ancient wings in stop motion.
Sepia stained scenes of cinematic thrills
we know are just pretend.

"Maybe he got lost in the clouds," I shrug,
as I glimpse a sliver of pure blue sky,
and turn a little red at the thought of
laughing at the lost wandering of an
unlucky amateur pilot.

Navy blue suit and silver gray hair
darkens my doorway, asking for a red hot memo.
I hang up and begin to make an unblinking
white monitor dance with black letters,
flash manila in and out of slate gray file drawers,
embrace the muted corporate rainbow, until an
ice blue cry from a cool gray hall.

"Oh my God!
Another plane just hit the Trade Center
like it was aiming for it...."
Motion my mouse and darkness envelops
a once bright white monitor screen,
a sudden rush of images unspeakable:

Black pinstriped shooting stars falling from the sky
piercing billowy gray plumes like daggers.

Fireworks of red flame, ruthless
roman candles pour from windows.

Soot gray soldiers streaked with fluorescent yellow
plunging into thick, impenetrable gray,
guiding black, white, brown, masses of humanity
away from dark clouds of harm,
guiding themselves into the void,
no guarantee of return.

My co-worker stands in my door,
bloodshot, kohl-rimmed eyes,
kohl black perfectly coiffed halo,
skin ashen pale and beet red all at once
thrusts a piece of still damp, still warm
paper from the printer into my trembling hands;
an eagle clutching an American flag,
and a screaming yellow banner,
"THESE COLORS DON'T RUN!"
Bold black letters make a bold declaration
under his razor sharp talons.
"They will not defeat us," she says,
voice dripping with derision,
with defensiveness, with dread.
 
I want to hug her, to tell her,
"Don't be afraid,"
but I can't move, can't speak,
can't begin to comprehend her fear
of possibly being labeled "terrorist" by people
just seconds ago her trusted friends
because of where she’s from, not
who she is, who she always will be.
 
She is just as American as I.

I manage only to mutter, "Thank you,"
but I cannot face her eyes.
I cannot face kohl black pools of pain.

This cannot be happening.

Planes should be flying routes by rote,
not slamming into the ground, into skyscrapers.

This cannot be happening.

People should not be pushed to pick between
perishing in a forced funeral pyre
or plunging from safe, gray, daily routines
to gray slab walkways designed to
deliver them to sure existence,
not unimagined evil.

This cannot be happening.

I say this into the receiver,
of a shrieking phone,
trying to calm Mom's shrieking;
a scream to a whisper of
tiny, fading blue:

"It's gone...it's gone...
I just watched it fall...it's gone...it's gone...."

This is happening.

We sit on the phone, saying nothing.
White noise broken only by my sighs,
her sobs until she breaks the bond of
unbelievable loss with believable dread.

"Has anyone heard from Richard?"

I remember my family tie.

This is happening.

A cacophony of thoughts
compete with deafening white noise.
I cannot face the idea
of being shrouded in black again.
 
This is happening.

Just weeks ago we buried
her brother,
my uncle,
his father....

This is happening.

"He's fine," I say,
trying to take tenuous control,
red eyes forcing back tears,
white knuckles clutching desk edge,
blue clenched jawed face.
"He’s fine,” I say,
trying to will a wish to reality.

I stare out into my office,
watch people press receivers to ears,
hoping to hear the voices
of mothers,
and fathers,
and daughters,
and sons,
and lovers,
and friends,
on the other ends of smoke gray receivers.

I watch people stare at unfeeling white screens,
projecting facades of faces of people
shrouded in slate gray, known only from
the evening news tell us in modulated tones,

“We don't know the full scope of
what is happening...."

They are just as lost,
just as scared,
just as violated as us.

Some of us get good news;
children home safe in dorms,
families far away, not near the unspeakable.
Others have loved ones not yet
in the thick of the fog, the flames,
but preparing to suit up, awaiting duty's call.
 
I dial digits deliberately, a fleeting, futile act,
and hope for a familiar, familial hello;
my fingers bruised purple, bruised blue
from dialing over
          "I'm sorry..." 
and over
          "your call..."
and over
          "cannot be completed..."
and over
          "at this time..."
and over, and I
          "please try your call again."

keep dialing again, fingertips almost black.
I have to keep dialing his numbers
one at a time to steady me,
to slow my racing heart.
I chant each digit with each push
of each gray button for each gray digit.
The redial button will not reduce the reeling.

"Hello..."
Golden warmth of relief shrouds me.
"I can't come to the phone right now...."
Silver frigid fingers of dread slap me, and I

slam the smoke gray receiver
in an ice white rush of fear.
I. Will. Not. Break. Down.
No matter how much I need to.

I look out my sterile gray window
but do not see a vacant, contrail free, blue sky,
the unfiltered gold glimmer of the sun.
I see only shadows until the
shrill phone ring shatters the silence.

"He's okay."
Mom's voice weary but warm,
a rush of light.
"He called.  He's okay."
The sound of a safe family should still
the unsteadiness. I do not feel secure.

I close my gray laminated door,
place my gray, color drained face in my
gray, color drained hands, and
softly shed tears for what I have not lost,
silently shed tears for those who have, who are

forever lost.

Poem, (c) 2011 - Tracey Morris, All rights reserved

Photo of WTC Tribute in Light taken by Dan Nguyen, 09/10/11,

and posted on Mr. Nguyen's Flickr page.