Norman Morrison

Not an unhappy man
but one who could not stand
in the silence of his mind
the cathedral
emptied of its ritual
and sounding about his ears
like a whirlwind.

He cradled the child awhile
then set her down nearby
and spoke in a tongue of flame
near the Pentagon
where they had no doubt.

Other people’s pain
can turn so easily
into a kind of play.
There’s beauty
in the accurate
trajectory. Death
conscripts the mind
with its mysterious
precision.

—David Ferguson