On 9/11

The phone rang early

Waking us up

My mom had called

To tell us that terrorists

Were attacking America

We rushed sleepy eyed

Downstairs

And tuned in the Television

To see a smoking skyscraper

In Manhattan

Time froze that morning

It stayed still forever

The day was as if a dream

Somehow everything

Had suddenly changed

It was all different now

And would never be the same

Ever again

Thoughts about the loss of innocence

And the education of children

In the crueler ways of the world

The tide had suddenly gone out

And there would be no more returning

To the way it was before

The Great Wall Revisited

Trails in the Snow

1991-1993