Marathon Day

I wrote this on April 15 and was just thinking of it on the anniversary of 9/11/01...Finally getting around to posting poems from the last six months..

Marathon Day, or April 15, 2013

This is the day as it becomes

the date

4/15, 9/11, 7/7 the list

goes on

Our faces know this pinched expression

tightly turned in lips

lines deepening between tired yes

Our faces will stay this way

for some time.

Then we forget.

Not from apathy, but survival

or compassion for ourselves

(though some can never forget, the loss so great)

And what is forgetting, after all

we overestimate the moral weight of our own feelings

longing for substance, weight

but still, it is a luxury.

Our faces will stay this way for some time

we forget

it happens again

(it happens to Others every day)

We reckon with this world

confronted by its suffering

always someone

somewhere

whose face is lined with grief

broken by sorrow

healed by love

even as it happens

again

and our faces

remember.