As a tribute and a reminder, I’m reposting a poem I wrote several years ago.
September 11, 2001
He laughs and runs just like the other boys even though
he doesn’t have a father just his mom.
Wild-eyed big-grinned wild-legged games of tag
with hands held open at the ready.
On a schoolyard in Missouri grassy brown and littered
with the colors of September
he’s happy, unaware of any threat except for
maybe Brandon who’s a bully and likes to pick on little kids.
He slows and for a moment stops and listens.
Eyes dart at the subtle hum that only he can hear
off in the distance.
Shoulders pull together at an imagined rush of wind.
Brown-black curly head dipped down,
he cringes as a plane glides overhead.
Sometimes his friends will tease him
but most times they somehow know and don’t,
remembering what Miss McCallum told them about
that picture in their history book, about that day.
He’s just a little boy
and he was only two some years before in New York City.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology