Homage to the WTC Expert Technical Review Panel
'T was two days after history changed its direction
as radically as a plane veering off course
when mindful of Nasdaq and Dow's bottom line
the White House, through Whitman, declared the air "fine."
Returning to offices, schools and apartments
the residents, with baited breath having waited,
let out that breath in relief, not understanding
that they'd have done better to have kept it baited.
For who would have thought, under such circumstances,
the White House would lie, and to
such a degree?
Americans couldn't begin to believe
that their leaders might poison them; call them naive.
They ignored the foul odor as harmless if gross
like their symptoms the experts said would go away
and armed with the buckets doled out by Red Cross
they cleaned up their apartments that looked like Pompeii.
A year later, confronting rage and litigation
from people who said we should not have returned,
EPA, in a moment of faux introspection
came out with a document called Lessons Learned.
However the residents weren't appeased.
EPA and the White House kept feeling the heat
so they set up a panel of experts to keep
the community busy and off of the street.
Five more buildings now face demolition and history
seems bent on repeating mistakes of the past.
Intervene, so years after this panel's adjourned
your memoirs need not also be called Lessons Learned.
Jenna Orkin
WTC Environmental Organization