Thread by @JohnnyRoedel

I recorded this poem in 2017 from my New York City hotel room bathroom. My wife was asleep after a long day of sightseeing-but I found myself very awake.

Earlier in the day we visited Ground Zero in NYC and the experience left a deep mark on my heart.

In the middle of the relentlessly noisy and dynamic city was this quiet and sacred place where hundreds of people were gathered to reflect on what happened on that terrible day in September.

Being at Ground Zero felt like I was walking on holy anointed ground. I could feel the weight of the two buildings absence. There was this remarkable thickness in the air - maybe that’s what happens when we are surrounded by dozens of tear-catching angels.

Ground Zero is part museum, part crime scene, part memorial, part chapel and part school - it is one of those unique places that overwhelms both the heart and the head.

There were so many names of people who had died right where I was standing. There were so many stories of people whose lives ended in the exact place I was snapping pictures at.

There was so much palpable heartbreak and terror in the energy around me - yet there was also this deep feeling of recovery.

Walking around the footprints where the two towers once stood was like tracing an old scar with a finger. The memory and ache were still there - despite the wound being physically closed.

I remember coming back to our hotel with pieces of this poem floating around my heart. I knew that wouldn’t be able to sleep until I wrote it out. As my wife slept me to me I mashed out the following piece of poetry while trying not to sob.

Once I wrote it - I did something I had never done with a poem before. I recorded it. I didn’t know why I needed to do it- I had this profound compulsion to say it out loud.

So, I memorized the poem and snuck into the bathroom and recorded myself reading it. I think I just needed to hear the words. I needed the poem to feel alive.

I had only just started writing poetry a couple months earlier and had never read any of my work outside of my own head before. I remember trembling as I whispered this poem into my cellphone recorder.

The following is from the middle of the night sometime in late July if 2017 recorded in the darkness of a bathroom in a New York City hotel room. I added a couple of pictures of Ground Zero I took that same day.

****

there’s a gap in the sky
and a deep footprint down below
and the space between both places
is as sacred as any that I know

the birds hold their songs
as we humans all reflect
and offer our pears shaped tears
as a sign of our undying respect

the resilience in their hearts
New Yorkers wear upon their sleeve
~ to keep on keeping on ~
despite twin towering absences they grieve

the names of heroes and legends
are everywhere to be found
when you take a moment and walk
these quiet and holy grounds

someday I hope that I can learn
the lyrics these names sing to me in a hymn
it’s a song about how hope outlasts utter despair
it’s a song about how evil will never ever win

~ john roedel