Storm Clouds
Today I am reprinting “The Silence and the Darkness” which ran last year on this date. This poem reminds us of the events of September 11, 2001. Let us always remember those who were killed or injured; those firemen and policemen and ambulance personnel and health care professionals who responded so heroically; those whose family members were killed or injured; those who kept us abreast of developments on radio and TV; and those who yet suffer, mentally and physically, from the attacks. And let us remember America, the way it used to be, and the way it is now.
The Silence and the Darkness: September 11
The Silence and the Darkness
A September 11 Poem
Can you hear the silence? There’s a space there in your mind, ten years old but still brand new – still burning you and touching you though you were far away.Buy Viagra Online.
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Can you see the silence?
Not a cloud was in the sky,
but a lost and wayward airplane
turned in to a tower
and your world stopped to ponder
until there was another
and then you were not sure at all
of what it was you knew,
but you knew it was a morning
unlike any other
and you could not forget.
*
Can you smell the silence?
Terror reigned and rained
in Pennsylvania, NYC and DC
and sunny skies were filled with clouds
of smoke and fire
and shouts and screams
and gasps and sirens
and mothers, fathers, children crying –
a spot of sun through monstrous clouds;
this was life
among the dead.
This was life
among the dying.
*
Then the loudest sound of all:
Silence: silence so profound,
from sky down to the ground
and back again.
And then the sky began to fall,
and all we knew was nothing,
nothing then at all.
*
You recall the silence.
It is always there –
a space inside your mind
that never will be filled:
not with pictures; not with sound;
just a piece of silence
in a place of darkness
inside of which is vastness
with a thousand million questions
and a thousand million resolutions
that all come down to this:
How shall we now live?
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The silence and the darkness
brought by stealthy enemy
somehow can unite us
when we ourselves can not.
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Remember those who perished.
Remember those they loved.
And remember then the heroes:
They never let us down.
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Celebrate that silence.
Celebrate that darkness.
Celebrate that space.
And celebrate America,
rising from the ashes.
*
Can you feel the silence?
Then ponder once again:
Who have we become?
And who shall we now be?
*
Copyright Daniel Mark Extrom. Sept. 2011-2012. All rights reserved
