Rush Hour in Manhatten

Rush Hour in Manhatten

Some will not stop and reflect on today
as they pass by the plot where victims yet lay,
as cab drivers, cursing, lay down on their horns,
their raised middle fingers urging tourists along. . .

. . .Just another day surviving the big city,
too busy to wallow at will in self pity!

There's no time, it seems, to pray over the dead,
with so much living yet to do still lying ahead,
to bustle about, lest they fall prey to the hour
our nation fell victim to the terrorist's power.

©September 11, 2005 Nancy L. Meek

In the Shade

I've wandered in this empty hole
for forty days that seemed like years,
their smoldering shattered bones
provoking still unbidden tears.

Each time I gazed into the pit
where once the towers stood
shading all who strolled below,
I lingered longer than I should.

As growing anger, fingers splayed,
reached for throats I could not squeeze,
I searched for answers in the dust,
face upturned, to catch the breeze.

Looking. . .listening. . .for some sign
we'd spy a leg, a hand, a bloody head
as the skies, no longer silent, roared
with Air Force One, drowning out our dead.

Their graves, I fear, will bear no stone
to mark where they are scattered now
in the cool shade of a big steel cross
that soothes the ashes on my brow.