*Posted by Kirk Spencer

Eleven years ago, on this day, the country was in shock as it watched the world trade center crash to the ground, taking thousands of souls with it.  I was reading Aeschylus at the time.  And my mind was already dealing with the effects of war on everyday life and then it happened in my own backyard.  So throughout the day, as I watched images of ordinary people suddenly thrust into a war zone and understood that though the weapons of war have changed, the human tragedy of war has remained the same.  And, through it all, there is a certain resiliency and resolve of the human spirit that moves on, even in the face of death.   Throughout that day, eleven years ago, I wrote down my thoughts.  And then from these notes, I pieced together these two poems.

On War

Thus spoke Aeschylus long ago
That war gives dust for gold
Whence a warrior went of old
Doth naught return
Only a spear and sword
And ashes in an urn
And so from Ilion’s funeral pyre
From peak to peak and tower to tower
Spilling both blood and fire
Spreads darkening and will not return
Until from here the whole world has burned
Limping away on bloody feet
Stares ahead in speechless grief
Through eyes of sad desperation
Through thoughtless chaos stunned
Sorrow’s clear beams of marrow’s sun
Lights the future, slowly pressing on

TheOdyssey

last words whispered far away
in ambered fear and sunshine
in the outrush of winds
in the snowfall of plans
we watched our highplaces fall
past the dust that cover all our autumns
past summer setting upon man that’s an island
past uncertainty as ash that settles upon us
until we share our silence as candlelight
until we bleed together and fill the banks with life
until we trade this world for another
and then
in thankfulness find our only center
upon the broken ground of nothingness