September 12th

This should be a dream.

I’m driving along the highway

from Greenwich,CT to Florence, MA.

Traffic stops me next to a rig

whose back doors advertise “G.O.D.”

and beneath it, “1-800-DIAL-GOD.”

On the highway, traffic slowing is soporific in this heat,

but I’m still not dreaming when i see the billboard

proclaiming a verse from the bible that warns

“Anger is the mighty foothold of the Devil.”

No this is not a dream.

The World Trade Towers in N.Y.C.

were hit by airplanes turned human missiles

and fell to the ground, pockets of crushed lives inside,

a sea of paperwork on the pavement.

Our president tells us that we all, as a nation,

holds a “deep and abiding anger” for terrorists attacks on America.

Will our anger cleanse the mess of the streets of New York?

In anger, as we strike back as those who have struck at us,

will we too be giving a leg up to the Devil?

I’d like to be able to wake up from this living dream state and call God on the phone.

I’d like to get solutions to this crises through “Guaranteed Overnight Delivery.”

I’d like to have hope shipped directly in a trunk, overnight, to those in need.

Better yet, ship us yesterday to be lived all over again.

Imagine yesterday:

No one boards a plane or goes to work.

All of us are safe at home with those who love us

in our quiet anger at the things that bothered us before:

Traffic, the laundry. the terrible twos, PMS and the telemarketers.