by Jonathan Hunter-Kilmer
a voice
my daughter's
screams and sobs
the answering machine
is everyone alive
please call
I would had I not been
asleep from night shift while the planes
and human bodies burned
and given her the reassurance
she so madly yearned
her mother was out giving blood
her work downtown DC
and that was not the morning
that I work where I can see
the Beltway near the Pentagon
the ghost town the next day
so traffic was near gone
when I came home the standard way
I listened to her sobs
and wished
she was not off at school
so I could hold her
as You hold the victims and the cruel
but she is out of danger
several hundred miles away
and we could tell her
that not all
was lost
on that bad day
