Ground Zero

Michael Ochs

Ground Zero
by Colin Dodds

The folding chair, the windowpane that survived
are what made ground zero so strange.
His blinking and his silent fires
are what made ground zero so like us.

Before he arrived, we were hunting out
the history of exactly what happened
to that child or this.
As if the milky way and the past that engulfs us
were just the wake of a gone locomotive.

Ground zero counts on its fingers
the ways god loves his children.

Rainrainrainrainrain.

We had lived in a time and place
in which exactly nothing would explode.
Now everything ticks.

And I hurry off to Grand Central Station,
Grand Zero Station, Ground Zero Station.
I forget which.

The hours and the rooms lightened, untightened.
On television, where most of this happened,
ground zero went for a stroll,
showing his scabs and talking of rockets
in childish bad taste.

Dusk arrived like another catastrophe
that nobody had prepared for.
Women shook out their hair.
Men tried to be in the way.

Death had made a daring escape
from the nursing home and the hospital
and stared through our dream of everyday life.

It's cold now,
but everyone stands outside the store,
even ground zero,
reciting what they have learned.

Blinkblinkblinkblinkblink.

[copyright Medium Rare Publishing, 2003]