nine eleven | The Bard on the Hill

Posts Tagged ‘nine eleven’

Attention held, I felt compelled
…To hear again the story
Of how three thousand died that day –
…It seems quite mandatory.

I’ve watched for years and shed my tears;
…I know the tale they’re telling.
It’s like the most remembered rhyme
…That’s in my mem’ry dwelling.

I watched again the death and pain
…So that I might remember
How fellow countrymen were killed
…That sad day in September.

I watched it yet to ne’er forget
…The ashen sky and faces,
As twin sharp needles in New York
…Plummeted from their places.

The tale I know, and all the woe,
…And yet blest I, the living,
Watched and will watch again, for this
…Is my respect I’m giving.

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

9/11

I was a teacher in a room –
My students learning math;
A colleague whispered words of doom,
Of planes’ destructive paths.

An outward mask, an inward mass
Of churning, troubled mind –
I must maintain an ordered class,
While I was none of kind.

A bell, a break, and I rush out;
My colleagues group, confer.
I gather bits, what it’s about –
The news gets nastier.

We find a room, the room of books,
Where we can watch reports,
And give each other wild dazed looks,
Insane, and out of sorts.

The towers have been hit by jets –
The damage clouded, cloaked.
They look like slender cigarettes
That earth lay back and smoked.

We look and one begins to fall,
The great calamity.
Our minds just cannot take it all –
What did we just now see?

I reassure my colleagues then,
As billows fill the air,
“Have courage and let’s all be men –
Most of the tower’s there.”

“It cannot be that all is lost –
The top just fell as though
A farmer came; his field he crossed,
And lopped it with a hoe.”

“You’ll see; you’ll see when dust has cleared
Most will be standing there.
Just wait till tower has no beard
And we can see it bare.”

I knew the tower can’t all fall
On top of one I sat.
I put my toes up to the wall
Of glass, like perching cat.

And there I was, a hundred floors
And me, afraid of heights.
I took one glance down; I abhor
Such dizzying high sights.

So in my mind that fateful day,
They were too big to fall.
But I was wrong; they went away –
Smoked cigarettes, ash all.

As with the towers, so with men,
And so with nations, too.
They’re none too big or strong to end,
When God says they are through.

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