The Butler Pennsylvania Poems



Nine Eleven

[Day Seventeen]

Late one night
in infamous September
the Court House clock
failed to strike the hour
and seconds passed
before a raven
glided down onto the Square
where I, still awaiting the sound,
watched it circle
then alight upon
a chilled granite slab,
to face me tilting its head
as if listening before lifting off
for the tower turret
whence it had come.

High above me it stood now
between two thin columns
robed in black
cawing its cryptic verdict
as to the doers and deed:
What has been
Is what has had to be.




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