There was a huge rumbling sound accompanied by the sound of people shrieking.

Borders bookstore

this guy had no interest in anything except getting away from where he had just been. It radiated from every muscle in his body. To get away.

this guy had no interest in anything except getting away from where he had just been. It radiated from every muscle in his body. To get away.

The whole street paused, froze, screamed, some people broke into tears, except for the ashen guy, who just kept walking. 

"There were about 230 people on the 81st floor and I was one of the last ones out. We took the stairs. There was smoke, but it wasn't fire smoke, it was drywall smoke and dust. The fire was above us."

There was no shock of wood, no beam    of light mahogany his saw teeth couldn’t handle.    When shaping squares for locks, a key hole    care tapped rat tat tat upon the handle

And as he worked within his shattered Sunday shop, the wood took shape: dry shuttered

But he was poor and most days he was hungry.     Imported cabinets with mirrors, formica table     tops, spine-curving chairs made up of tubes, with hollow     steel-like bird bones that sat on rubber ploughs, thin beds, stretched not on boards, but blue high-tensioned cables, 25were what the world preferred

I am told    by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall    after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon    who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us    how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;    the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many    of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing    with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.

I am told by many of you that I must forgive    and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon    waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall    after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia    and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors    of Hanford.

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after    that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws    a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire    which will lead all of the lost Indians home.

Years later I tell him the stories of what his brother-in-law did to me, and he wipes a tear from the corner of his eye, wraps it in a white handkerchief for church,

the vital thing like blood, blood of kinship, blood spilled in the streets  of Baltimore, blood oozing from the soul of a son walking prodigal paths leading to gutters

a man troubled by a son gone missing in the head, drag racing his only car at night, traveling with hoodlums to leave the books for street life, naming mentors the men who pack guns and knives, a son gone missing from all the biblical truth, ten talents, prophecies, burning bushes, dirty cars washed on Saturday morning