| |
8:48
It
was 9:08 when a coworker told me
A plane had struck the World Trade Center
He could see a small fiery
Photo on the net
I am ashamed to say
I was upset
Over a petty work issue
And thought there had been a
Minor accident. Yes,
My thoughts were on myself
It was 9:11 when other coworkers started
Talking, milling around
Still, no announcement was made
Soon we heard that a second tower
Had been hit
No announcement yet and
We had to work
It was 9:27 when I realized that one of
My two best friends no longer works at some
Other building downtown
That her new workplace, her new job
Is at Tower One
And I called and I called and I
Called her office number but
Nobody answered and
The rings were the loudest, most
Disquieting sounds I had ever heard
It was 10:10 and still they wanted us to work
Though everyone I neared in the halls
In the bathroom in the pantry
Shook his or her head
In disbelief in horror in slow motion
It was 10:23 when I had
The presence of mind to call this best friend
At her home and was thrilled though terrified
To hear her sobbing to hear her
Ragged voice
To hear her
Tell of being a few blocks away and
Seeing it all, and
Seeing and hearing from no one in her office
Though she had been calling and calling
And she lived just ten minutes from work
Had thought that was a blessing
Now she did not know
What had become of her coworkers
Some had become friends in
The last three months
At her centrally located new job
At my office we were not yet told
To go home and it was 12:30 when
I went out to lunch. On the midtown streets
I saw armies of
Workers: white, blue,
Pink collars
Aged young in-between
Scurrying shuffling dazed looking up into the sun
Fearing more planes?
I wanted to join them
I wanted to walk keep walking walk away
I wanted to join my two best friends
My man
My cat
I didn’t even know then that
Another friend in Brooklyn has
An ex-boyfriend who worked in Tower Two
We had doubled-dated, gone to Great
Adventure Amusement Park
I didn’t know to be scared for him as I was for all
the
People I didn’t know and
For myself, too, even though I wasn’t on site
And still I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that
We had to keep working though how could we
How could we edit words that now seemed to fall off
the page as
We would later learn people were to fly try to fly off
the towers
Finally at 2:04 we were told by voice-mail to
Take off if we had personal things to attend to but
How do you attend to the death of
Thousands of people you do not know and to
The possible death and near death of people you do
know
And to the destruction of your stupid innocence along
with a
Landmark building, a symbol
How do you return to work
The next day at 9:00 because
Otherwise it will be a personal day and
You do not have the time for a personal day
Who has the time the time
The time: it was 8:48
Iris N. Schwartz's poem 8:48 is one of approximately
100 poems published in the anthology An Eye For an Eye
Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11. This
paperback anthology includes work by Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley, Diane di Prima and other
prominent as well as lesser-known poets. The publisher
is Regent Press. Bookstores can order the book from
the distributors Ingram, Baker & Taylor, or Book
People. It is also available on-line from Amazon.com.
More of Iris' work may be found at
Poetz 2000. |