Mr. Cowham, you are the eggman, two dozen a week,
maybe a capon, or a laying hen for soup.
Always a kind if Vermont-brief word,
and feathers for us kids when asked at hallowe'en.
I don't recall a walrus, or being one,not then.
Just before retirement, Mr. Cowham drove a new, silver-blue Chevrolet,
nineteen-fifty-eight it was,
the year before those Chevy wings tookflight
in autocar iconography, and informed all of Calatrava's buildings ever since.
You know the one I mean specifically,
that transport hub downtown hoping to make us
think something positive about 9/11going onward.
Repeatedly down-scaled; its final form a shadow.
I could tell you of that morning: no one close killed,
but still a damn near thing, with a broken jaw, a broken ear, a broken head,
two weeks in coma with no one the wiser,
and that was just my wife's brother.
My son, down there that day, freaking out,
called to say he'd survived. I then turned on the TV,
just in time to see the second tower fall.
He was a little uptown, thank the lord, so had had a head start.
There is yet a poorly patched hole in the wallboard upstairs from that day,
from the second plane (my foot as proxy), whose wing wheel nearly smeared
my son's friend's life into those mean streets downtown.
Close, and close enough.
It was then I became a walrus of a sort, on the soft couch beach, for seeming months,
cable news on, day into night,
till there was other news again.
Then suddenly one morning, maybe at 5, who but Martha Stewart,
green bean recipe in tow (steamed with tomato and garlic, perfumed with basil)*
came on to rescue me.
First scheduled programming in weeks.
That recipe etched itself inside my eyelids;
no need to write it down.
We were going in to see 'Urinetown' that strange September day.
I have always claimed I had ceased to believe in the perfectability of mankind,
and wore glasses, not of rosy tint, but yellow.
Having just had cataract-clouded lenses fixed, I can attest it's true.
(I am reveling now I can again see blue.)
In the end, I claimed New York as forever my home city, my New Jerusalem,
the one that won that day the so-called war on terror, before it ever was declared.
I am forever proud of these my kin,
looking not outside for vengeance,
but to each other,
together then, an undivided front.
Later, Jon Stewart asked us, 'Are you OK?', when his TV show returned,
a decent and a caring man. [the clip is still on Youtube]
OK? I was not then, and still not quite.
*My Savior Recipe
In a good sized sauce pan, heat some oil,
extra virgin (the volcano god that haunts the stovetop has his needs.)
Add a garlic clove (well-abused or squooshed),
a nice ripe plum tomato in eighths or twelveths and cook.
Then a pound or so of green beans,tipped and tailed;
a nice big sprig of basil to sit on top;
salt and pepper as you like, red pepper if you please.
Cook on low, with cover on,
to steam till beans' heart-cockles cry out, 'Hold!'.