Burn the clothes
you wore that day.
Save the ashes.
Bring them to the square
where we are fashioning
a monument of ashes.
Winds will rise,
soften the heroic shapes,
the paper faces
around the square will
become eyeless,
the sideshow
will depart to a muffle
of drums, leaving only
hollow sounds of wind--
and wind being wind,
the ashes will follow it,
leaving a swept field
of countless jagged stones.

©2002, Doug McClellan

---

Doug McClellan is a maker of collages and assemblages who took up poetry when he turned seventy.

Next page > “Dispatch from the Home Front: Halloween 2001” by Tony Brown...
Poems After the Attack collection > table of contents

---

Previous Feature Articles
By Date | By Topic

---

---

Subscribe to the Newsletter
Name	Email

---