Nine Eleven.
As with JFK,
And then John Lennon,
Moments that we
Indelibly,
Have pressed into our memory,
Carved there by shock,
When worlds were rocked,
And we could only reel,
Too numb to feel,
Beyond belief,
United,
By collective grief,
Wrenched in time,
So now we find,
We’re all aware,
Of exactly where,
We were.
Thanks, Ken. I know I’ll never forget until the day I die where I was on the morning of 9-11. The other events were before my time or I was too young to be affected by them. I just posted my own similarly-themed piece. It’s actually reworked from a piece I wrote a year ago but never published. The conditions are exactly the same, though. It’s the same gloomy rainy day.
I was too young to remember JFK, but Lennon and 9/11 are imprinted permanently in my mind.
of where we are yes…i only wish the ‘united’ feel lasted beyond our short attention spans…
It never seems to.
Sure, even at the time I realized from here on out life would be different. When I got to the end of your poem I couldn’t help but wonder how many people find that they’re aware of exactly where they are.
I thought about writing more, but stopped myself, because in essence that’s what I wanted to portray. There are a certain few select events that stun our collective conciousness in such a deep and profound and sudden way, that we remember exactly where we were when we heard the news. It’s the same kind of effect as an epiphany in a way, although it comes from a negative angle. I was too young for JFK, but I remember clearly sitting in my bedroom, actually reading the interview with John Lennon in the current issue of Playboy, when I heard that he was shot.
With 9/11, I have a clear image of being in my then sister-in-law’s livingroom, weeks before moving to Sweden, when we both heard the news on CNN, and then watched the second tower be hit.
Yes, very true. We know exactly where we were. Some events define our memories.
Beth
This poem is so lovely and what a tribute to this day. I stood in shock on the small island of Tahiti in the middle of the South Pacific and could not believe my eyes and this was shown over and over again on our TV. I could not imagine this day and the impact it would have for the rest of our lives. I feel for each and every person that this affected and think back now on this day and standing there on this morning watching the TV
http://gatelesspassage.com/2011/09/11/the-sorrow-of-our-times/
Thanks very much Sarah. So many thoughts about time and how it works relative to our lives. At 8:50 eastern standard time that day none of us knew that within minutes that day would be imprinted on our minds for the rest of our time.
cool I think your right …some events we remember exactly where we were or what we were doing , i think you put this beautifully thank you x