Thoughts on 9/11

I know I just posted a few days ago, but it feels weird to let this day pass without saying anything. Especially since I live in NY, was in Manhattan that day, and work a few short blocks from Ground Zero.

Ground Zero is hardly a smoky war zone anymore - for years now it’s been a construction site, in preparation for whatever the next step is. But there is still this gaping hole where buildings full of life once were. I think that’s an interesting parallel to how many of us feel. We’re not in the throes of shock and grief. We move on, we make the best out of life. But we walk around with a hole. It may not be so obvious as the one in Lower Manhattan, but you can’t live through such chaos and loss and not be changed.

I’ll end with this poem that I wrote during a lunchbreak back in 9/11/03. There is this giant globe that used to be in the lobby of World Trade Center as a symbol of world peace (I haven't had time to sort through my pictures so here's a link to one). Now it lives on in Battery Park, as a memorial with an eternal flame. Anyway, the poem-

Hope

Battered globe,
shattered globe,
filled with dents and scratches,
holes and rips.
Though you have been
through fire and ash,
an earthly hell,
yet here you stand-
indestructible.