WHERE NOTHING EVER HAPPENS

The nation reeled in horror as the work day began with a series of bombs and crashes that left the World Trade Center in flames and smoke billowing from the Pentagon.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing. I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime," said 20-year-old Beverly Evans of Dallas. "How can we stop something like this from happening?"

Reuters Report, 09/11/2001, 10:35 AM

Thousands of miles away. I am stunned.
I cannot get my mind around the image
off an album cover, out of a comic book, impossible
unthinkable, the twin towers melting down
like Roman candles, melting in the midst of New York
like wax. It strains credulity. In my minds eye I can summon
figures leaping from the tower, but I can't make out anything more
than a sillhouette; like in Hitler's paintings, they have no faces.
What I can make real is the faces of the stunned and wounded
wandering the smoke-dunned streets of Manhattan
trying to punch up numbers on their cell phones
or queing up to get to a pay phone
Just to say I'm here; I'm safe.
I can hear sirens, and the murmur of tens of thousands of voices
Trying to make things somehow better, less like
this horrible thing has happened. This does not happen;
my mind is fixed on a point of contention:
this does not happen, things like this
do not happen, as I listen to the reports
of emergency personnel rushing to the scene
to somehow stanch the flow of blood
from this gaping wound
in the Isle of Manhattan as I sit at my desk
In Charlotte, North Carolina
thousands of miles away

Where nothing ever happens.