My poem is late today
because it’s September 11 and I’m not
sure what I want to say about how we
understand history how we know
all that happened and what happens
in this world all the time and how my friend
Ruth Sergel recorded stories from people
you can hear them on Memory Box
on MSNBC and how September 11th isn’t just
one awful thing that happened today
just like it was 20 years ago inexorably
beautiful one of those What a Day days
also the birthdays of my friend
Barbara’s daughter Allie and my college boyfriend
Eric Rodriguez and maybe my mother’s brother
who looked a little like Lionel Stander
Major Domo type he vacillated about his actual
birthday and his age just like my mother
we went to a Chair Yard Sale where the house owner
collected chairs and I bought two even though
I have many chairs (his daughter said Sit Down and laughed)
and Stone Ledge Organic Farms my favorite
had the first honey crisp apples today
and tonight even though it’s September 11
maybe because it’s September 11
we will meet Edite and Keith good friends
from Maine on the river in Troy
and drink to today without having
to explain more than that.
Thanks for this. Did you sit in every one of those chairs?
"skaal" "salute" "good chairs."