Susan Hawthorne #179 absence

each photograph commemorates the presence of an absence
                                  --Marjorie Agosin, Circles of Madness

she is a bird
floating high
or is she falling?

her body is an apron
her arms are wings
insomnia pulls me skyward

night is full of silence
bodies hurled from planes
into the spinning air

below in the Plaza de Mayo
the grandmothers wear kerchiefs
like planes like aprons like falling bodies without wings