Looking up at the World Trade Center, New York City, 1995. (Photo by Karl Döringer / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Later everyone remembered it was a day
you wouldn’t have remembered otherwise.
The shops and bars full of the regulars
and maybe some visitors here on holiday.
A cop on a corner, a plane in the sky,
a couple of soldiers home from no war.

A man walking a dog, or just walking?
A firefighter polishing her truck?
Was a child learning to wiggle her ears?
Did a bus full of children wave as they pass,
hello or goodbye we would never think
to ask in that world we lived in then.

The week ahead showed little promise,
dinner Friday with the whole damn family,
the someone we should call but won’t,
the birthday we never can remember.
Plans we don’t plan to put off but will.
A bill we owed a long time coming due.

Not feeling the hand of God upon us nor
the essential blessing of any certain moment,
the little news there was born from far away
on breezes through windows slightly open.
Our delicate white lace curtains billowing
that lucky day we thought nothing happened.

Bruce Taylor offers this comment: “For years I taught a course called ‘Imaging 911,’ which dealt with all the ways all the various arts and media have tried to process the events of that day.” For more by and about Bruce, search for his author page on VolumeOne.org.