My brain is mushing images together right now, of towers falling and people falling. There was the Holocaust Museum shooting yesterday (was it yesterday?) – someone I know tied it to the Tower of Faces in the museum and its message of remembrance, so brutally contradicted by the gunman. Yes, I am forgetting his name on purpose – but not the name of the good man he killed, Steven Tyrone Johns. (Madeleine L’Engle convinced me long ago of the power of knowing a person by his name – and conversely, of forgetting a name and letting the powers of time close behind its unremembered owner. Come to think of it, that’s kind of the point of the Tower of Faces, too.) Then there’s this story today, about a church burning, its steeple falling, due to arson.
And just a few minutes ago, someone sent me this news about a colleague. I never met in him person, but we had a number of long phone and email convsersations.
There’s something in that stew of roiling images about love too. About not filling yourself so full of hate you leave no room for truth or sorrow; not busying yourself so thoroughly with work (my colleague was known for insane work hours, including rejecting automation of tasks because ‘it didn’t get things right’) that you lose sight of life. About leaving room for love.
Towers fall, towers of stone and flesh and memory. Like ivy among ruins, love can grow in the space that is left – but it can reach so much higher, faster, if the towers are left to stay standing.
Or something like that.
I’m not really sure if this is a poem growing or just messy thinking.