lc_story65.xml

lc_story65.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-12-12

My mother woke me with a phone call: "Something is wrong in New York. A plane..."

When the tower collapsed, it didn't register right away what had really happened. The sky there... It took several minutes for it to sink in that the tower had collapsed, and then another tower fell.

Similarly, it took a week for me to return to my art. After a week without writing a word, one morning I exploded with some 6000 words about seeking creative solutions, trying to find alternatives to the calls for revenge, for more terror in response. That essay freed me, somehow, enough to write a poem that afternoon about hope, healing, and home:


The Difference Between Repair and Reconstruction

As I sleep, this house creaks
under the weight of wood on wood,
the crankiness of masonry tile as it grinds
against itself on the roof, like a pumice stone dragged along

the edge of a tooth, the weakness
of bones remembered in such sounds. I should
thank this day for opening these wounds, for reminding
me of what is needed to either start over or repair: the longing

for wholeness that urges soft tissue to speak its
promise to the torn skin beside, to whisper that it could
find a way to bind again, not as new, but stronger for finding
again the pulse through the pain, the cry, the first strains of song.


Grant Hier