I Lost My Socks on Nine Eleven
I lost my socks on nine eleven,
Somewhere on West Side Drive.
To a perfect girl with shoes so wrong;
For a forced march - an evacuation.
Lithely summer dressed, lean and spare,
Marching north - pier by pier,
Heels in hand, head held high,
Feet bloody, cut and bare.
Pausing, sitting, silent, staring;
Still proud, still lovely, but gray like me -
With the dust of the towers' fall;
Miles we'd walked, we'd been sharing.
She laughed when I said, sitting,
"Your feet will get infected";
She waved south at the broken city,
And asked me if I was kidding.
I'll never again see her face,
I'll never know who she was;
Her name, her age, her place in life.
Never again be in that place.
I wonder does she recall?
Sitting on the ground amid,
The multitude of refugees,
And laughing at it all?
She let me clean from her the street;
The dirt, the dust, the asphalt grit.
She let me slip over the blood,
The socks I'd taken from my feet.
I lost my socks on nine eleven,
Somewhere on West Side Drive.
To a perfect girl with shoes so wrong;
To a girl who was there when...
