By Will Kirkland
It’s hard to focus on the moment
if that’s what anniversaries are for,
the moment of unraveled time
so enormous it cannot be named
mere moment.
Remembrance — of what?
Of the airplanes striking?
Of the black smoke rising?
Of the bodies falling?
Of our own brief living with that dark body falling?
Of the men rushing into the flames
or the terrified rushing away covered in ash
of plaster and bodies not falling
incinerated, only?
What do we remember –
All this? Or
All that came after?
Or all that didn’t come before?
Do we remember the bodies
of the tens of ten thousands
in the incinerators
of the follow-on wars?
Or the deep hollows
where knowledge never found home
in the men with the warnings
in the months leading up to
the moment
when the airplanes
the towers
the bodies
the flames
shaped memories
like nothing before?
September 11, 2008
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