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this is so hard I like to dream big dreams don't you? we're Americans right... so, does that mean something, anything at all, to you? maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. in the 70's, they built a spiral twin cathedral up into the sky. almost like we were telling the world hey, we can touch the face of God. look out we are 110 stories high. this is the tale where... American glory and ingenuity never end. never say never again. no, never. with a spine spun of steel and made to last. it was Mid-Manhattan's super skyscraper Mecca. until one September morn two twin towers became two twin pyres. oh what a bonfire. God could see this one now all the way from heaven. and we saw it everywhere on television. and see how the American dream girl goes up in flame. that, in part, that was only just a part of the pain. but the worst was the horror. why is it Americans are not supposed to scream? nor flail nor fail nor fall nor leap? we are supposed to be the brothers and sisters of faith. we are supposed to be the doers, the ones that over-come. but on that day, we became the ones undone. it was hard to be heroic. noble. among the terror. I remember the man who jumped and seemed to fall for the longest time... and how I covered my mouth and no sound came out and how my eyes squeezed closed and all those tears poured out. and there was a couple who held hands and jumped too. and there were others waving at the top of the building waiting for their rescue but that would never come. 200 plus souls. All Americans. All-Americans. never mind that the official New York coroner's report read for that day, that those 200 plus souls were expelled out of the building in some way...they weren't. they jumped. they fell. they died. each individual making their own final decision to fly as we watched...on street corners, on television at home, in our offices. no New York coroner's report can change these cold hard facts. my heart breaks or them all. especially for the falling man whose picture has become so notorious and was labeled distasteful and unheroic. he is heroic to me. he made the only decision possible for himself under the worst possible circumstances. I see him momentarily suspended in the ether of the camera lens. the entire world is there to examine him. we don't let him go. we judge him. yet, he's suspended there gracefully in mid-air like some odd ballet. but it is not ballet. he will be dead in a blink of an eye. but he needs to be remembered always. I can't turn away from this. the false idea of what it means to be American and heroic. if Father Mychal Judge were still living he'd give the falling man his last rites. A hero's rites. I can't comfort him. I wonder if the falling man is somehow aware of a world consciousness, of all of us thinking of him beyond the grave? and is he at peace now? or is he in limbo? suspended like in the photograph? like Marilyn Monroe...hounded somehow, because of our perpetual curiosity about him? when they built the World Trade Center they might have been trying to touch the face of God. I hope the falling man lept into air and found the arms of God to catch him somewhere as he fell I want the Creator to bless him. Copyright September 11 , 2014/All Rights Are Reserved By This Author Melissa A Howells/ this has been percolating in my head for several days now Meloo/Tilt-a-World/All Ideas/Rants/Poetry/Prose/Dreams are legal property of this writer Bless Richard Drew for the Photograph and for all of his photographs of that day so that we do remember. Sometimes we have to look at things that are difficult. Bless Father/Chaplain Mychal Judge and Father Grogan...the 2 Priests who died on the actual site of the World Trade Center, the first while giving last rites and the second who was a passenger in a plane who hit one of the World Trade Towers. May we learn to love one another better and listen more...I send this intention out to the world at large and to the Creator. Vote for this poem |
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