His face fell off sometime in the night
Tumbling all the way down from the heights
An icon of rugged individualism gone now
The Old Man of the Mountain lost forever.
Not three years since the twin towers collapsed
Geologic time and contemporary events crossed paths
Granite stone standing untold thousands of years
Met the fractured fate of modern steel and glass.
Silhouettes of both remain as memorabilia
Remnants of an illusion of permanence
The way we go along from day to day
Until the earth shakes and the world erupts.
Some think the revolution may never come
When the mass of people become an irresistible force
When the good of all triumphs over private profit
Doubting its inevitability though change is inexorable.
As the World Trade Center fell alongside Wall Street
Humbled by a scant handful with imagination
The toxic ash cloud of shock and awe in the air
Negated the fiction that the Empire is forever.
Those paired columns erected as a symbol of power
Ended up serving as a monumental gunsight
As the hijacked planes took aim on the target
Attacking the finance capital that rules over us.
How quiet then the demise of nature’s monument
The emblem of New Hampshire my birthplace
Mourned sadly in stunned silence without blame or anger
Like a death we all knew would come one day.
Never expecting the downfall would be that day
Though the cracks were apparent for years
And the effort to shore it up had no way to succeed for long
The catastrophic moment takes us by surprise.
What happened to the Old Man was not an act of God
What happened to the WTC was not an act of Allah
What happens next is what matters most
Leaving behind the shadow outlines of the past.
What happens next is what matters most
Leaving behind the shadow outlines of the past.
