Your health

went to hell

after the terrorists

blasted our city

White ash spat

on your September Eleventh Street

sticking to sad shoes

The unmentionable odor of death

suffocated your lungs

delivering you

to the empty hospital

where the missing

were supposed to be

Inside the oxygen tent

W.H. Auden’s poem

lay open on your bed

We must love one another or die

seven words of resuscitation

for short, quivering breath

Only poetry can

restore

–Louise Crawford (with italicized lines from W.H. Auden)