Faces on the Walls.

We packed two trash bags with old clothes
we did not need anymore and wheeled them
over to Bellevue for the Gifts of Love
campaign, walking like the homeless
with all of our belongings past the rescue
staging operation on First Avenue.
Police and fire fighters stood uneasily
at intersections waving all the traffic on,
checking faces through the windows.
Stacks of sodas, Poland Spring, and candy
under tents--the smells of hot dogs cooking
on the grills--gave the street a picnic air, but
there were no families, children, no delight,
no gorging on the goodies. Sirens played
in place of radios. Everyone we passed looked
tired and wary, glancing up in shock when
overhead a fighter jet crossed over.

The pictures of the missing taped on plywood
walls began a block before the hospital --
a few and then a gathering crowd of faces,
names, descriptions, people who last week
were riding on the subway with us down
to Fulton Street and Broadway. Have you seen
my husband, wife, or child--my father, mother,
friend? Have you seen this missing person who
was in the tower when it happened? Who was
sitting at a desk when everything stopped dead?

Have you seen this person who for me was all
the world and now is all of grief and loss?

We walked along the wall, scanning for faces
we might know. The wall went on forever, there
and at so many other places in the city.  Turn
a corner and there might be another ghostly
crowd at a bus stop, on a diner's window.
After awhile, we start to recognize the faces.
She's still missing, we saw his picture at the armory.
They smile at us from holiday living rooms.
They hug their children, pet the dog. They wear
their wedding clothes, their bathing suits.
They are from everywhere. And now are here,
waiting on this endless wall for you and me to come
and see that they have lived among us, that once
like God they were invisible and now are not.