Rewind - Richard Fleming

Written in free verse, this poem commemorates the tragic loss of life on September 11, 2001 following a terrorist attack on the New York’s Twin Towers. A version of it appears in my second poetry collection, Strange Journey, available online from anthologyofguernsey.com

Rewind - Richard Fleming

Rewind Time, wind Time backwards.

Make the struck towers rise from dust, reconstruct themselves:
glass, concrete, girders, walls,
a huge jigsaw

interlocked, complete again.

Lights come on, phones chirp like crickets;
in reconstructed work-stations,
fingers dance on keyboards again;
vending machines cough then spew out pungent brew; air-con sighs then resumes; elevators ascend, descend; video conferences resume mid-sentence, emails beep, digital clocks flicker like quick, green lizards.

Time restarts as though it had never ended. Rewind Time, wind Time backwards.

Flesh, breath, hope, innocence: all the mundane certainties of ordinary lives
are reaffirmed.
Shoes, handbags, mobiles,

warped by intense heat: these un-melt, re-form, resume their shapes.

The terrible, unearthly screams subside. Rewind Time.

Backwards
the soft clouds drift; birds fly in reverse.
Those grim death-planes, stiletto-silver in the morning sun, withdraw, like daggers, from the shattered towers,
whose twin glass skins, pristine again,
shimmer
like smooth, un-rippled water.

Richard Fleming