When it hurts, we return to the banks of certain rivers.
                                                     ― Czeslaw Milosz

The burning unburdens itself.  Spaced between block and block. It rushes around us like the smallness of grief, glass figurines broken.  Only the birds witness the sorrow.

Oceans are large and so the innocence of a morning with sun and an afternoon that promises warmth will end in wonder, the throng of death wiping the day into splinters, into the thin loss of a space that was filled. 

The Hudson and Potomac linger in their own tables of water.  We understand the need for flight.  Landing, landing. Leaving, leaving.  There is a suggestion that wildflowers will leave their color on this day. Consider the process, the complication of grass, as it’s trampled. This is the heavy cargo: grief and astonishment.  We breathe in the air as the bee stings its prey.

Triage.  This sadness and what we understand of hope.  We leave our homes, our habits and wives and children.  Gather the nails: police officer, firefighter, human, and friend. This is homesickness, the regret in numbers and tons.  Later, the data is tallied. Silent calculations as the wind picks up and carries the odor.  Wrens land and leave while we gather the dead. Matchsticks against the warm sun.

When you enter a hallway and find the emptiness with sound, swallow the memory, because it has the shape of grief. If you start your day with a hatful of sorrow, follow the apples and remember their color.  It is our corona, our bulb and keepsake. The smoking piles of rubble will billow and ask the living to keep living, while we cook potatoes and gaze at hillsides, stare at the night and pass meaning into meaning.

—Original poem written for NCPERS Remembrance of 9-11
by J. Scott Bond