Attention Span – 911 Memorial

This morning I turned on the TV to watch and remember the 9-11 attacks, that killed so many innocent people in New York City. There were comments and news bites, but the talking heads kept interrupting and distracting. Network TV went on with trivia as usual. As the Vice President delivered his remarks. only one network was watching. The rest had already moved on to old news! It just caught me the wrong way, so I decided to write a poem reflecting on my feelings of the morning.

Planes crashing into towers

New York City belching smoke

Americans at work

Oblivious

News trickles into tsunami

Eyes and Ears glued

Real-time terror

Quite different from

Video Games

Reality blended with tears

*

Flash forward…

Talk shows // Politics

Preempt memories

Horrors dressed in flowers

Commentators jabber

while Vice-President speaks

Dead names read

Unheard

*

Sad specifics

Too much for delicate ears

Might reignite fear and anger

More salacious news appeals

How sad when heroes

Go unrecognized

Soon to be forgotten

*

Replaced by

A magnificent tower

A fountain

A marble stone

engraved with names of lost

Loved ones still mourn

CNN regurgitates

President’s faux pas

******

Photo: Dwight L. Roth

Little Boys…Big Dreams

A memorial to the Wright Brothers;

Young men with dreams of flying.

The beginning of something

greater than themselves

Remembered

with a giant monument of stone,

high on Jockey’s Ridge

in North Carolina.

***

Little boy visits and wonders

what it would take to

be remembered

with a monument of Stone.

***

It takes dreams

and the courage to live them out;

It takes someone to inspire

to encourage

and

to believe the impossible.

***

Photo: Dwight L. Roth

Dedicated to my son, who always believed he could fly!

Impressively Unimpressed

Kitty Hawk (a Haibun)

Years ago we climbed the dune at Kitty Hawk, NC to visit the Wright Brother’s Monument. It was a fun time with our young boys. I am amazed how far we have come since that first flight on matchsticks and canvas!

Impressive granite

monument  // rising bird wings

Young man unimpressed

**********************************************************

Photo of the Wright Brother’s Museum: Dwight L. Roth