Collapse of the World Trade Towers. Pentagon holocaust. Airplanes tumbling to earth from blue September skies. In this terrible inferno is also the collapse of our personal myths of a safe and ordered world.
A steady flow of stories still pour from our radio on the kitchen table. Stories of unendurable suffering told against a backdrop of human cries, the constant scream of sirens, and interrupted by segues of measured, solemn music. I cannot bear to hear more. I cannot bear to turn the radio off.
After this day of agony, evening has mercifully come and I walk outside our farmhouse to strut and fuss over scraps in the hen yard as they go to roost. Laundry still billows an sways in an amiable breeze, a cowbird sings his liquid song from deep in the gnarles apple tree. I sit. I listen. I weep.
I weep with gratitude that my children are safe in their homes tonight, with gratitude for small chores which keep me focused and sane, moment by moment, and I weep for the war which began today. The war that has no name yet.
I hug myself and marvel as the sun sinks behind a thicket of pines, that the world still turns, that stars still twinkle high above, that crickets, like minuscule violins, serenade each other in the fading light.
I want to drive to town. Oh, sweet Lord, I want to enter a cavernous cathedral and fall to my knees on the cold, marble floor and pray all night. I want to light a candle for everyone, for someone, for everything and every sould we have lost.
But I am here on my mountain. I am far from anything remotely like a city. I wait in the gathering dusk as my husband finishes the last of his chores in the barn. In a few minutes we will join hands and walk into our kitchen, after this long, long day of weeping. I look up to see the stars are brighter now. They shimmer and shine and glisten like jewels on dark velvet, like tears falling to earth from deep, deep heaven.
Judith Gillis
Kernersville, N.C.