nmah6440.xml

nmah6440.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-02-15

One of the residents of the Health Care Center where I work had the tv on in the lobby. I was watching the reports of the first plane collision when I saw the second collision and realized this was no accident.
For the remainder of my work day I kept the radio on by my desk, wondering how many targets would be hit.
That evening I watched tv at home and saw which area churches were having prayer meetings. I picked one and went to pray with a standing-room-only crowd.
I had a deep desire to memorialize this loss of lives. Over the next few weeks this poem developed in my being:

Holy Smoke
Twin towers--
funeral pyers.
Common cremation
of ninety nations.
Communion of ash:
Sacred mass of the
massacred.
Bread unleavened
of nine-eleven
to the world served.

Kathryn McKee Hendrix

funeral pyers=unwilling incineration of the living.
ninety nations represented among those lost.
communion of ash-we all breathe the air they became.
bread unleavened=the rapid departure of a large number
of people as in Exodus 12:34 &39.