September To Remember

Sudden thunderous booms

And deafening loud sirens

Then the smothering and soot

With the chocking silence

Some even tried seances

Others asked for a sooth

Cherished voices groaned

And were soon gone

Never to be heard again

A new kind of evil was born

Precious lives were lost

In sorrow, we were torn

Peel back the curtains

To remember

That clear day of infamy

In September

When our hearts were etched

In ember

The scale of terror's horror

And the bane was at a variance

But bravery and kindness roared

To relieve the defiance

Our shock at the audacity

Of evil and nescience

There was no fascism.

There was no racism

Only gratitude for the heroism

There was decency for a reprieve

Bravery then was more common

Than we imagined or believed

A sudden splendor

In the face of death's offender

Frightfully, wandering long

And lost in the dark all day long

We walked step by step

Through lack from the hijack

Strangers in the solidarity

Of grief and grace

To the defiance in the skies

That had traced

The bonds and spirit

Of our wounded nation

We owe a vast unconscious debt

To that notion and reflection

With pain and suffering

On brute randomness of death

We could feel the terror

From the smothering horror

Many could recall

The terrible planes

Still, we struggle

With lonely pains

Pains that cut deep

Within our brains

But we learned

We are not fragile

At any depth

We are possessed

Of a core strength

That survives the worst

On September eleventh twenty years on.

Inspired by 9/11/2021 speech by President George Bush