September 11, 2001

Last night he asked us over and over 
if we had packed everything he’d need 
for his first day of pre-school, his first time 
away from us with people he didn’t know. 
And later, while he slept on sheets filled 
with smiling Barneys, I lay in the next room 
worrying about bullies and other terrors 
that might be waiting within the walls 
of Miss Rose’s Sunshine Pre-School.
 
But when I arrive to pick him up 
he wears the grin of a survivor and runs 
across the room to tell me he’s learned 
a sunflower dance. "You have to open up 
your arms," he says, "and pretend 
you’re reaching for the sky" and his eyes 
are tiny suns as he waves his hands as high 
as he can. It’s then I clutch him to my heart, 
grateful for his milk and cookie breath and 

the beautiful ordinariness of one more day 
of his life. And I don’t want to let go, 
I don’t want to lead him out to my car 
and the agony on the radio, the sagging 
flags coloring our way home. I want to hide 
him from today’s sky where planes aimed 
at death and changed his world with blood 
and flames while he danced as a flower, 
palms open, like a man gasping his last prayer.

From Dream Teaching (Grayson Books).
Used here with the author’s permission.