Reaction to Poetry

Reaction to Photograph of September 11, by Wislawa Szymborska and Compendium of Lost Objects by Nicole Cooley

I remember that day clearly. I was ten years old. My parents were on a Mission’s Trip to Wales with their God-thumping band. They were scheduled to return home that day, I didn’t know how or exactly when. Either way, I couldn’t wait. For the last month I had been hustled around from one family to the next. That night, I had stayed the night at my teacher’s house. When I woke up that morning, to my horror, I had wet the bed for the first time in years and was of course, too embarrassed to tell anyone. I new it was going to be a bad day.
Math class was about to start and I was too busy passing notes via paper plane back and forth with Nate to notice Mr. Sweet get rushed out of the room. He was angry when he returned and told us to go sit on the floor in Mr. Stapleford’s room. We blamed our punishment on each other as we shuffled through the hallway. Turning the corner into his room, we were greeted by the other 5th and 6th grade classes. The television fifteen-inch was rolled in. I have spent the last nine years trying to purge the image that was funneled into our eyes from my memory. Airplanes were crashing into the World Trade Center, those magnificent Twin Towers that I longed to stand on top of every time I saw them out in the distance as we drove by on our way to the Jersey Shore. But here they were, on the screen front of me, smoking, smoldering. A new image appeared which at first just looked like fiery debris falling off the sides of the buildings. Julie raised her hand to speak as we had been taught, but no one was paying any attention. She turned and asked me instead, “are those bodies”?
“Not bodies” Mr. Sweet had overheard, “They are living people”.
It was then that I was roughly awoken from my youthful sleep, forced to consciously face the reality that is our world. These were images that I had almost forgotten until reminded I read Photograph of September 11. I am glad to be reminded; I feel it is the best way to honor the men and women whom perished that day. I believe that Wislawa Szymborska gave those men and women great respect by “not adding a last line” (Wislawa).

The eighteen-wheeler backed into our school parking lot, pushing behind it a square cargo container that was larger than my house. We all knew why it had arrived; to collect supplies to bring down to Louisiana to relieve all whom had been affected by the ferocious storm christened Katrina. None of really understood what that meant, but we knew it was bad. The closest we could relate to these people thousands of miles away was when the ice storm of ’98 blew through, leaving us all without power for weeks in the dead of winter.
I was joining up with a group from church that would be going down the following week. Even looking back now, I cannot comprehend the destruction that we were met with upon rolling into New Orleans. Even though it was four months after the hurricane hit, bodies were still being found. We found endless remains, but since they were not human, we left them to continue to decay. The stench of people’s rotting lives; their houses, their furniture, their pets, their livelihoods; all rotting.
This poem remains me of the countless personal treasures that we found, and trampled on. All covered in silt and squished deep into the slowly drying mud that caked the entire city. So many lives were destroyed and yet, we rebuild? Of course we rebuild, how could we let a city, so rich in culture just disappear? More storms will come, and New Orleans will hold fast and shout in the face of each on coming hurricane; “Bring it on”.

"Wislawa Szymborska." The Poetry Foundation : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry. Web. 17 June 2010. .

"Compendium of Lost Objects." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 17 June 2010. .

A woman has been creating art out of the wreckage left after Hurricane Katrina.