“A man crosses the street in rain,” begins Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Shoulders.” “This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo.”
Since May I have thought about this day. I must have gone over what I would write a thousand times, although, like so many of us, I am at an utter loss for words. It does not matter that a decade has passed. That detail is minor. What resonates with me is the unbelievable sadness that resides in the hearts of those who feel a collective loss to this day.
“The sadness never goes away,” a close friend of mine who lost her brother in the attacks once told me. “I waited for it to get easier, but it never does.” It never will.
The effects of 9/11 are irrefutably tragic and permanent. But we must commemorate, using our collective sadness as a foundation, in order to build something new. September 11th is demarcated by a date, but the losses extend way beyond the day itself. We have all lost. And we have all been touched by other’s losses.
We must commemorate all of those losses, not with sadness, but with love, because “if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing with one another,” then we will continue to flounder, lost and confused. “The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling.” We must nourish each other, be there for one another.
“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye:
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing,
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.