Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Light, Interrupted



In one season
life can

bury
its own color,

cover
every inch of ground

in death
brewed from

an age-old
malady,

leave the path covered
with skyjacked shadows

of nearly
three thousand

who died from the spread
of the disease—

but as shadows
are

light interrupted,
they are not then, nor now,

light forgotten.



© 2014 Jennifer Wagner






Monday, September 9, 2013

The Finest Thing

High Angle Rescue Drill, Firefighter Ian Wagner
Photos © 2012 Ian and Jennifer Wagner Family


On the deck
sipping the last of summer
from my glass of iced coffee,
I’m drenched in a moment
of luscious sunshine,
one of the few left before
autumn’s return.

I’m watching our youngest boys
with delight—
plastic swords and shields in their hands,
attacking The Alien, also known as
the small green sprinkler
with four arms
and a mind of its own.

A miniscule, slate blue butterfly
flits by
and then a larger one, white and clumsy—
meanders by too.

Does it know where it’s going? 
I like thinking it doesn’t,
it just floats along, discovering.

But I know as I watch
two crows
wave west over my roof,
looking so purposeful,
that there are jobs to do, of course—
and each one of us has our own.

A neighboring apple tree
is nearly full of green-gold apples,
three Asian pear trees are laden too—

our Polynesian neighbor
will fill sacks full of the succulent fruit soon,
drop them off on our porch,
with his brown-sugar fingers
and white smile, wrinkled.

My contentment spreads,
a drunken, giddy peace
in the listening to leaves rustling—
still clinging, green, to trees.

They will fall soon enough,
as time keeps its own pace.

I’ll savor this good day
with the gray day of remembering looming,
ashy, grating,
real—
for the grief of
New York’s Bravest, Best and Finest
and all who fell too soon.

But real, too, is the spirit
of what is the best of us.

And that has lived on.

I know it
in the browned fingers of giving,
in the bright laugh of the innocent,
and in your mouth on my neck—

like a breeze,
like sunshine.

I am reminded,
here, in this moment,
not eclipsed
by any large, evil scheme,
that come what may,

some will continue to Give,

Sacrifice,

Love.

And that is still The Finest Thing
on any given day.




© 2013 Jennifer Wagner
 

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

9:11 am



Shift ends at 8am
and I look over at the clock

It’s odd to me he often arrives
at 9:11, post commute

I try not to think about
that nightmare

I had struggled to get
out of my mouth

Shaking and choking
as I tried to tell him about it;

The one where I am at his funeral
with our sons beside me

I just enjoy the moment
of being a firefighter’s wife

Enjoy his smile and laugh
full, when he bursts in the door

Sounding like the Ghost of Christmas Present
rich and deep, full of all things good

Today is the day I think about those photographs
with the towers in calamity

The firefighters rushing to, and in
while others are running away, and out

The looks on their faces
telling bravery is not without fear

It is committing to give
in spite of it

Not withdrawing
courage to save someone else’s spouse,

Someone else’s children
while praying someone will remember theirs

And I do





Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner 

Posted to dVerse Poets