Friday, September 11, 2009

9/11 Eight Years Ago

Kicking off this blog this day was important to me. Here is the poem I started in the air, was inspired by in Canada and finished at home. As a preface I was flying from Heathrow to San Francisco that day with a further connection to Oregon...It didn't occur to me my family had never seen it until today.

United, 955

What I see is a sprawling earth
dirt filling the drying seas,
where land drowned is reborn
in Christian waters, jihad blood
in the rain-filled mosses
bloated with redemption.
I want so much to believe
in whole thoughts, a pinch of reality.
But I am in pieces, root, bark and leaf
parched and hovering like a bird of prey,
to fall, envision and clutch
the colors of life.

Right now San Francisco
is covered with American flags
and the family I’ve not seen
in days, months, almost a year
has been on the road for nine hours
to take me back to my childhood bed.
Yet the sleep would not be unbroken,
the roses were waning,
the ocean tide cooling
and leaves were hurling themselves
onto the pavement like kamikazes.
But in the moment of our touchdown
confined to the cabin we first heard the news,
the landing was perfect, the land an oasis
a feast for my eyes that were born here,
and I was grateful, silent and thankful
for the chance to return to my home.

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