Water on Red Metal Beams

Amid the rubble, there is a red metal crossbeam. Iron workingmen placed it there, years ago. We, we never noted its placement, until it all fell. This ordinary line crossed a building space, an open sky. The architect made the blueprint for placement. The foreman instructed the men for execution. The workers secured its rightful permanent place. The people took their lives underneath it. Somewhere between beers and cigarettes, And discussions of dates and deadlines, this cross held its daily office workers. Generations of men and women, up and down the lines. They took for granted the beams underfoot. They came and went, unaware of red metal beams, like this. A simple column, perhaps, meant to hold things up. A sturdy pillar, perhaps, meant to distribute even weight. and then, it didn't hold the sky underfoot. They fell, together, in a storm of heat, fire, and water. That beam was found amid a pile of unimaginable pain. Tonight, on tv, it is a relic. A dead treasure in a glass museum. It is cut metal, a certain symbol for a time of chaos. A friar douses it with water. We try to make the pain holy. And yet the red rust of the beams wear on me like dried sacrificial blood. That water doesn't sanctify the cold metal. The memory of this crossbeam, drips like a leak into my hot soul. Watermarks on iron; they come and go into rubble. It is the memory of red rust, repairing what's been built, and lost, that resonates, as I think of water, fire, and metal. I imagine tears of wives, husbands, sons, daughters, friends and children. Slow trickles accumulate over the red crossbeams. They drip and drown the relics and rubble, annually. They renew the blood of the builders and workers. They regenerate all that gets forgotten when we build, and fall, into memory.