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
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