ATTACKED AND STILL STRONG!

WDC Writers Cramp 09-11-10 for 091210

COUNT: Lines


And now another birthday has passed. The cake has all been eaten; the decorative wrappings have been shoved into the trash. Your eyes turn to the real world:

Today is the anniversary of 9-1-1.

For your prompt today, please write about where you were THEN -- on that day when you discovered that America had just been attacked.

As usual, you can write a poem or story, essay, or narrative.

ATTACKED AND STILL STRONG!

Free verse in honor of 9-11 and its aftermath!

Alone and horrified
at my desk,
I await the news
on the radio;
astonished and posturing
radio announcers
relay the unbelievable
happenings of the day.
Reports of
judicial threats, building closings
and event cancellations
haunt the usually tame
public radio offerings in Memphis.
There is a pall cast
over the city and its airwaves
that is unmatched
by anything else in recent history,
including Elvis's demise
in 1977, still
an active day of mourning
city-wide.
That event changed entertainment;
9-11 has changed our secure, comfortable
consciousness, forever. Our national
innocence, our naive sense of
unalterable good.
But we are still us, the US;
we have been attacked, and
are still strong!