Remembering September 11th

I wrote this poem after we went to an air show a few years after 9/11. The kids were enamored with the planes and the excitement, I was moved to tears standing in front of twisted steel beams that were traveling across America as a somber reminder of the lives lost that day.

Air Show

What my children saw –

Two twisted steel girders

one iron red

one steel silver

mounted on marble black

accented by a brass plaque.

Rubble bent and spent

nestled between a booth

selling Kettle Korn

and another hawking beer.

Poor competition for the

Thunderbirds above

shuttling through the sky 

in screaming formation.

And the toy stand beside

selling styrofoam planes

for two dollars.

What I saw –

A story told in ragged sobs

by these two wasted beams.

A tale of white faces,

hellish heat,

falling bodies;

a tome of wreckage and debris.

This humble memorial

speaks louder than the shrieks 

of the pirouetting  

fighter jets over head.

They dance for the crowd

as these ruined supports 

stand silent

at eternal attention

saluting the lost.