D I S A S T E R S * I N * R E V E R S E
SO SHOW ME A MIRACLE, LORD.
Not any of those modern-day ones,
Good for the time the camera is rolling
Then back to the way it always was
One week down the line,
Like Virgin Marys on sides of barns.
Anything can go into remission.
Anything can be scotch-taped.
SHOW ME A REAL MIRACLE, O LORD!
First, it was forgotten.
Settled, buried.
Then the pieces slowly, unnoticeably
Started to burrow up from the sand
At the bottom of Long Island Sound.
Tiny pieces,
Then bigger ones:
Metal, plastic, bone--
The pieces rose
From miles and miles of ocean;
Slowly they convened:
Pieces roughly in the shape of a burned aircraft
Were dismantled at a nearby airport
And dropped seaward, chunk by chunk
Over months, as speculation about
Bombs and mechanical failures buzzed.
Boats dropped more and more pieces,
Closer and closer toward
One spot on the ocean floor.
Committees were disbanded,
Prosecutions undone,
Charges dropped,
Press conferences unformed,
People raised up out of graves.
SHOW ME A MIRACLE, O LORD.
Slowly the media gathered,
Day by day.
And the divers started swimming
At that fateful spot,
That cold cauldron of metal parts,
Making sure the pieces were gathering.
The water grew murkier one day.
A large piece of aircraft was carefully dropped in
From a huge boat.
Suddenly
Many other boats arrived at that same spot
All at once,
Dropping into the water
Lifeless bodies that had sprung a week before
From the graves
And huge pieces of metal, plastic,
Melted polyurethane, shoes, and other personal effects.
The cameras and choppers swarmed.
The surface of the sound slowly caught fire,
A burning cauldron of ocean
The size of a football field.
Night came.
The boats dispersed quickly, leaving only brightening fire.
The cameras scattered with the choppers.
SUDDENLY ALL THE
FIRE FLEW UP OUT OF THE WATER
In a metallic cyclone
Conjured up by the sky.
After a few minutes of inferno,
The explosion was drawn into itself.
The pieces assembled into a 747
As the burned bones within gathered their flesh
And started talking lazily as the plane descended
For an early landing at JFK
On a balmy summer evening.
DEAR LORD
DEAR LORD
DEAR LORD
Are miracles disasters in reverse?
Or have I got that backwards?
Unmake the unmade bed.
Untell me the things that you said.
Unleave me standing in this room.
Unhappy--the house of doom.
I want everything to go in reverse
Back to a time
When I knew you loved me.
Or maybe I only want certain things
To go backward.
And if planes can be undestroyed,
Volcanoes calmed,
Typhoons made into breezes,
Why not this?
WHY NOT THIS, O LORD?!
These last two years--
We could argue it in reverse,
Move out of two apartments
And drive back across the country
To Seattle,
Pulled there from the back of the van
As if by gravity
Or some huge rubber band;
Watching the horizon fade through the windshield.
But disasters go only one way--
Forward.
Not backward.
Not even in slow motion,
Except on video and in some memories.
And if I were a powerful alien
Traveling here from outer space,
Born outside earthly, human time,
Maybe I could make everyone spin
On Planet Earth--
Maybe I could fast-forward and rewind
Everyone's lives
To find the best parts of the tape.
And then I could press "Pause."
Freeze the frame.
Stop the world.
And point out what went wrong.
These are disasters.
Disasters in reverse.
Healing in the making.
Or is it?
Undo Unleave
Untrue Ungrieve
Unfeel Unspeak
Unreal Unseek
I can see two living-room windows
In the skyscraper on Second and 85th
Through the crack where my curtain
Doesn't quite cover the pane.
What would the people in that apartment building do
If they had to live their lives backward
For the last few years?
(And how selfish it would be
To make them for my sake....)
Old things would become newer.
Lost would become not-lost.
And people who were leaving
Would look like they were just coming home
For dinner.
Just another day--
Only backwards
At the ass-end of time.
People's words
Would go back in their mouths
To be mulled over
(Or most often not).
Just another
Just another day
And in my apartment,
Cracked plaster leads the eye to an old valentine;
Stacks of Village Voices under blue metal shelves;
White cat-hair tufting on a bright-maroon bedspread;
Half the toothpaste gone (and splattered) as when you were here.
Just another
Just another day
A picture of you mock-frowning on the old couch we used to have;
Dust collecting on the top racks of CDs;
Bathroom-door paint chipping off roughly in the shape of Italy;
Towels and sweaters at half-mast, obeying gravity.
Just another
Just another day
Without you here.
Beige skyscrapers, half-filled with lights;
Taxicabs passing below, steering with their horns;
Stars shining out there, beyond the clouds,
Beyond the blue that binds the atmosphere.
Just another day
Without you here.
It's just another day.
o please
o please
o please come back
o please rise up from the dead
o please unexplode
o please my child's laugh again
o please my parents' smiles again
o please let it be you at the door
o please let it be a mistake
o please let this long night end
o please
o please
o please not true
o please o lord
undo undo
And if I could run everything backwards
To one point in time,
Would everything be healed?
Or would it be set to run
The same way,
Reset like a spring?
Time only goes one way--
Forward,
Toward a goal it never reaches;
Without even slow-mo
Or a play-by-play
To soften the impact.
But any day now,
Any day,
I'll be just fine.
I'll be okay.
I'll unremember
The worst, and too
I'll unforget
The best of you.
Is it only perspective, Lord,
That puts a disaster in reverse?
Maybe we only heal in hindsight--
In the epitaph.
In the aftermath.
And maybe looking back,
I can see us clearly
For the first time;
Perhaps that alone counts
As a kind of miracle.
Maybe I can learn
To put things together next time
So they don't blow apart
In debris and fear,
Destroying the intent
Of my deepest prayer.
© Alan Reade, 2011
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