The Rising of Broken Brick and Twisted Metal

by Jim Daniels

of the cacophonic destruction of the old hospital

carries all the last breaths of those who died here

and all the first breaths of those born here

and all the furtive sighs of doctors and nurses

and the removed stitches of healing

and the removed stitches of keeping it together

once released from the somber cave of waiting.

My wife was born there in what’s now more ruin

than refuge. I unfold her birth certificate, a thin

delicate page of an old prayer book.

The demolition, behind schedule, machinery

breaking down in the whirling lack of emergency.

I stand in front of our building across the street,

an old church repurposed into condominiums,

saved like parishioners imagined they would be,

rising like that dust into abstract, imagined glory

above the nothing of not living forever.

How many took their first and last breaths

in this same hospital, then trucked through

our church in their cushioned coffins?

I don’t mind the daily rattle of destruction.

It’s the breathing that chokes me, the irreverent crush

of mingled air. The rectory next door, the convent

across the street, the school behind us. Condo, condo,

condo, like ancient Latin chants of old hymns.

Not knowing the meaning is key.

During WWII, my father, a young teenager,

helped a group of old men roll a car over and over

down his Detroit street to the scrap yard to be melted

for the war effort. That’s the noise I hear today—

imagine hearing—the visible noise of our future ashes,

the perfumed smoke of incense rattling out

of the thurible as the priest circles the casket

the blessings and curses, first cries and the last,

rising into everlasting air. The blessing

of the aspergillum’s holy rain never

arrives to tamper down the dust.