September 11, 2001 — A Poem of Remembrance

The rumble of a jet engine

     low over Manhattan, too low.

Necks on the street craning to see

     the source of the noise.

In seconds, the sound of a great collision,

     a fireball in one of the twin towers,

    now gashed and looking like a broken chimney.

Calls are made; sirens roar;

     police and firemen on their way.

Chaos on the inside; chaos on the outside:

     in both human hearts and the broken tower.

What a horrible accident!  It just couldn’t be!

Yes, it could.

     And it was no accident:

In a cave in Afghanistan,

     Osama Bin Laden grins from ear to ear.

And in New York City, hear the rumble of another jet

          barely overhead.

Now two towers, burning, smoking.

     First responders doing their thing.

Bystanders on the street, running for their lives
      and staring into the impossible;

     A nation on the edge of their seats,

          rubbing eyes in disbelief:

               Who?  What?  Why?

What’s that?  The Pentagon too?

     And four new generations of Americans

          taste the bitterness America tasted

               at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941:

                    O God, not again!

At least the worst is over, right?

     Wrong.  The twin towers shiver,

          and crumble into a pile of dust and ash and twisted metal:

               an impromptu grave for more than 3000 people

                    who went to work that day with full calendars

                         and plans for the next weekend.

“I’ll see you this evening,” said the wife to her husband.

     “We’ll toss the football when I get home,”

          said the father to his son.

There was no evening for them,

     they never made it home:

          the football stayed in the closet;

               the boy stayed in his room, his pillow soaked with tears.

And it still wasn’t over: a plane spirals down in a Pennsylvania field;

     “Let’s roll,” says a passenger, and that plane is brought down

           by brave Americans who put the lives of others above their own.

There was a lot of that that day.

As night fell on America,

     there was much weeping and fervent praying;

          the President spoke, flags waved,

               the strains of “God Bless America” were heard from

                    sea to shining sea.

And America has never been the same.

         

There are memorials now in all these places,

     where thunder struck and people died,

          memorials made of wood and metal and stone.

And in the hearts of all Americans who lived that day

     there are memorials in our hearts and minds

          composed of images we will  never forget …

                and shouldn’t.