North Carolina Poets on 9/11

I took this photo of the prayer/memory wall on
my visit to Ground Zero, NYC a few months after 9/11.

After a tragedy, reading and writing poetry can help us process, cope, and remember; give voice to and honor the pain and the sacrifice experienced by so many. You can find the poem below, and more poems about 9/11 by North Carolina poets at NCArtsEveryday.org

8:46  AM

by Janice Townley Moore

Stopping by the PO, I find
my words come back, poems
in the SASE postmarked Chicago.
By 8:46 it does not matter
though I do not know that
in the capsule of a classroom,
teaching Hemingway’s war to students
who do not remember Viet Nam.
All of us smug, remote from atrocities.
We are not in a war now, I smile,
more words to come back.

At break with colleagues
I learn of words lost:  incomplete
conversations in air
and buildings, blown up
between noun and verb,
one syllable and the next,
snippets of final vowels,
consonants left in hallways,
by the water cooler,
on the stairs–
all potential words.