Where Were You When…?
Where were you? The question always comes—
Where were you at life’s end?
Where were you when
Elvis & John Lennon died?
Where were you when Kennedy was shot
& the Twin Towers fell? Where were you? is
hindsight’s marker, the teleology of death
the forward movement of life arrested
& reversed. Where were you? is built
into the rise & fall of empires, yet this empire’s
cancerous spread is both global and hidden.
Few noticed its rise under cover of night so
how many will witness its end? How many
of us will be left? That’s the question we
never ask when separate from events. But now
we’re in it, the eye at the centre even &
when the storm is over we might be an
entirely different species, & you
wonder what the question will be
or if we will ever ask it again.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
