Acrid, the choking smell of smoldering destruction.
Bitter, this stench an incense wrought by hate.
Putrid, the cloying taste of pulverized cement
Windmixed with incinerated human thousands.
Immolated innocents, workers of eighty nations,
Vaporized because they were together
One September day in one famous place
When only hate a watch was keeping.
Mounds of twisted steel and crumbled stone
Memorialize their fearful source: rage.
But swirling acrid clouds carry away
Family, works, love and beauty.
first published in Poets of the Vineyard Anthology 2002,
also Short Stories Bi -Monthly,
also the Feature for the first 9/11 Anniversary, Hoopeston Chronicle
© 2001 Bonnie Manion