I wrote this in conjunction with my novel Scattered Debris.  In the novel, the poet Ezra Finch composed this in the days after 9/11.  Ezra, I think, is much more gifted at poetry so I’d like to leave his version to imagination of the reader of the novel.

Under Mourning Skies

Under mourning skies of grey
A silence of falling tears
Echo in these man-made canyons
Emptiness rumbles like thunderheads
Swollen with anger and pain
And waiting to explode with blinding flashes
Filling the scars with floodwaters

Under mourning skies of grey
The ghosts of memory remain
Loitering in the ruined rift of time
shadows in the dust cloud that roiled
Along empty streets and settled amongst us
Phantoms refusing to be washed away
By last memory imaginings

Under mourning skies of grey
We look up to see noth...