Following the attacks of 9/11, the poem below was published in the December 2001 edition of ESSENCE Magazine:

THE LIGHT THAT NEVER DIES

And now we step
to the rhythm of miracles.

The time of light is upon us
like dusk
pillowing its weary gray head
upon the pearl-gray shoulders of mountains.

Having known our souls too intimately
grief turns away now
like a false lover burned
too severely.

The naked sentry
of a single true integrity
salutes the bold unfurling
of dignity’s simple flag.

Fear crawls into the shadows
of the damned and wretched.
Peace blossoms like moonlight.
In the depths of a night
steaming and fetid with blood
men and women stand strong together,
their eyes dancing among the saints,
their hearts singing for the angels.

(From ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love)

An earlier version of “The Light that Never Dies” was actually written several years before 9/11 and first published in I Made My Boy Out of Poetry. At the time, I thought I was writing about turning points in my individual life. It later turned out I was writing about much more than that. The poem was destined to become the first of several responses in the form of literary and digital activism addressing acts of terrorism so heinous that only their planners had imagined them possible. 

Bits and pieces of this story have already been shared in various formats. Twenty-five years later, however, when joined together to construct a more comprehensive narrative, new insights emerge regarding both the past event and its present-day implications.

HOW IT BEGAN

Early on September 11, 2001, I received an email from a friend stating without details that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. I wondered how drunk, or possibly overworked, the pilot must have been to let something like that happen.

I did not email my friend back right away or call her because the homecare assistant who helped me with my mother, in Savannah, Georgia, for two hours every day had arrived. I was rushing to get to the library and back before she left. With a backpack slung over my left shoulder and two books in my right hand, I was walking through the living room towards the front door when I noticed something odd. There on the TV screen, instead of one of my mother’s favorite game show hosts, or a soap opera, was CBS news journalist Dan Rather.

Just as I began to wonder why Rather had inserted himself into our daily routine, he said something about reports of a second airplane hitting a second tower of the WTC. More incredibly, he switched to a video clip showing exactly that.

Stopping in the middle of the room and staring at the TV, with silent apologies to the pilot I had presumed negligent in some manner, I said out loud, “Oh my God, that was an act of war!”   

That instance of 305,000 pounds of steel, glass, and jet fuel exploding against the South Tower of the WTC  immediately erased and rewired every assumption people all over the world until then had held about: notions of security, international peace, military domination, economic priorities, and categorizations of what we call human nature. Such matters would be further compounded upon learning the wo American Airlines Boeing 767s which struck the twin towers of the WTC were only half of four hijacked to strike targets in my homeland. News about the crash of a third Boeing 767 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a fourth which courageous passengers forced to the ground in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, would not come until later.

For the time being, should I continue on to the library as planned, or dig out the Air Force uniforms I had packed away a decade ago and report for duty? I forced myself to go to the library, concentrate on doing what I had to do, then rushed back home as quickly as I could.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

It is, perhaps, historically fitting that the 25^th anniversary of 9/11 should fall in 2026, the same year Americans rightly observe the 250^th anniversary of their country’s independence. It is also painfully ironic. In the aftermath of 9/11, some 2,996 people—airplane passengers, WTC workers, first responders, citizens of 78 countries–– were estimated to have lost their lives. Since then, it is now believed that more than 9,000 additional victims died as a result of health complications resulting from the attack. That makes the overall number just under, or over, 12,000.

To read this article in full, view the original live broadcast of Dan Rather reporting on the 9/11 attacks, and see the December 2001cover of ESSENCE Magazine, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Thank you for reading.

By Aberjhani