BRIAN DUNCAN | IN A FLASH

IN A FLASH

for Bill

Every now and then I pull up your Facebook post with that photo of you,

standing in the rubble of 9/11, in your Ladder 59 helmet,

yours the only truck sent that day from your firehouse way up

in the Bronx. You arrived just before the first tower fell.

This is going to be a long day, one of your buddies said.

Your face is lit by the flash of your disposable camera.

Behind are the dark holes of blown-out windows

in the buildings that still stand. Ahead are all the funerals

you’d attend, day after day after day, until you just couldn’t anymore.

The look in your eyes no longer the one I remember

from when we were boys, sitting at dusk on the field after track practice,

figuring out infinity and the universe, and what’s beyond it,

and what’s beyond that. In those eyes now I see the bodies of the jumpers,

and those stories you told before. The red-hot ember down the back

of your neck that left a scar. The time you were lost crawling

in a smoke-choked apartment, tangled up in a Christmas tree,

thinking you’d never get out.

Where you wiped the sweat off your face, left behind

are black smudges on your cheek and brow. Ashes. Maybe

a family photo from the desk of a worker at Cantor Fitzgerald,

a stack of memos from Aon, a napkin from Windows on the World,

a bit of a hijacker from Flight 11, or a trace of one of your 343 brothers.

You burned all your photos, your memories, one day, but couldn’t forget.

Your posts these days are always about accepting death, being ready

when it comes. You quote Jed McKenna, Eckhart Tolle, and Rumi.

You cling to the risk of a vertical climb in the Shawangunks,

live near the airport where you skydive, finding that thrill

you always sought, that release, that feeling of free fall.

Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey with his wife, Margie, and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory at Princeton University for many years and is now happily retired. He enjoys devoting his time to poetry, gardening, and hiking. Recently, his poetry has appeared in ONE ART, Thimble, Passengers Journal, Whale Road Review, Elysium Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig.