Implosion
 
A wrecking ball will rarely draw a crowd,
But when they use explosives to implode
A good-sized building, TV trucks show up
And people gather by the safety fence
And helicopters hover overhead.
 
There are some desultory pops before
Initial waves of charges separate
The decks and girders, climbing floor by floor
As the structure sways beneath its weight,
Until large charges cut the posts and core
 
And all the pieces tumble to the ground       
In sequence, folding into the fall zone
Amid a wave of cataclysmic sound
As clouds of pulverized concrete and stone
Escape in billows from the rubble mound.
 
And the assembled spectators erupt
In massive whistling and whooping cheers
Instinctively, as if from simple joy
At the precise and orderly collapse,
A kind of beauty anyone can see.

David Stephenson

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  David Stephenson would be pleased to hear them.