Snowflakes

©Jeff Franks — November 2002

Stillness wraps around these artifacts
like a final breath
Converting to ice
and collecting on the menacing chimney
Slithering down the bricks
propelled by gravity and atrophy and shame
Minute and hour hands
on the piled up watches
long unwound
are silent
No ticking,
the quiet betrays time
time has stopped
and cannot be started

A gentle snow arrives
and is dispersed by the wind
It swirls round and round
above the wire and the open ground
Where heavy boot steps are etched into the ice
Where the trails of lighter feet were dragged forward to a termination
The snow cannot conceal the transgressions,
nor can it purify this place

Taking a deep breath
you swear you can smell soap
and something more
Closing your eyes,
your mind becomes detached from the coldness
and you feel the heat
At once you hear a churning
and feel compression waves
pulsating all around you
There is a rumble
generated by the flames rushing to escape the narrow chimney top
Ash and smoke billow far into the night air
and intermingle with the falling snow
You feel the heavy particles
on your skin
like a thousand pin pricks of rain

There is an awful smell of burning hair
and the delicate skin of children
Traveling down the chimney before the flames,
bodies piled in the ovens by their own kind
Before the ovens, the clouds of gas floating over fathers
and mothers huddling with their children
The naked and broken bodies falling to the floor;
ashamed, fatigued and dehumanized
Before the gas, the hopeful eyes
and outstretched hands waiting for the water grasping the soap

Snap and back you return to the stillness,
it is unnatural
There is no peace in this cold still place
only an undercurrent writhing beneath the ice
Here the souls of the dispatched call out for justice,
but more importantly for a recognition
For a rejection of irrational prejudice,
cruel and mindless conformity
and the self-consuming hate of bigots
In this now still place
where tattooed skin fell
among the snowflakes