Falling

Neighbour’s awake, three in the morning 

His head moving, and he’s awake and yawning 

I call out to see that he is well 

And he too, back to me, to say “it just fell!” 

I watched as did the countless others,

Of the smoke billowing from the two brothers,

Replay upon replay,  dreadful view

Of the dark chimneys of smoke into the blue.

 

Souls in their desperate bidding, yearning

Souls in hopeless resignation, burning

Souls in their free fall flight, sadly turning.

 

I woke up at three in the morning for the next sixteen long years

Locked and awake with my anger and my long memory and fears

And always, I notice my neighbour’s lights on, shining brightly on,

But our committed and united shock and our despair is gone.

Innocence shall die as innocence does and honour too will break

Guilty men will still reach to the top and rogues continue to take

But wait, let us honour the TWO, NINE, NINE SIX with devotion

Even though they’ve been followed by dead that would fill an ocean;

So the mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends, and too never forget

Fathers, sons, brothers, the responders, the children, the unborn yet.

Souls in their desperate bidding, yearning

Souls in hopeless resignation, burning

Souls in their free fall flight, sadly turning.

 

I pay my respects to the families of the victims of 911.

In the first section of this poem, the first, third, fifth etc lines have 9 syllables while the alternate lines contain 11 syllables.

In the second section of this poem, each line is 16 syllables long, representing the 16th anniversary of the attacks. 

The feature image is not a 911 image. Due to the pain and sadness caused by those images, I have used a stock image.

My symbolic structure of this poem pays homage to the families and victims of 911 and to those hundreds of First Responders who have died in the years that followed the attacks, due to the toxic dust from Ground Zero. For them, Ground Zero has been a constant physical part of them for their remaining days.