Twenty-Two Years

Could Have

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck—there was a forest.
You were in luck—there were no trees.
You were in luck—a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck—just then a straw went floating by.

As a result, because, although, despite,
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence.

So you’re here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave,
reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn’t be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

—by Wislawa Szymborska

I think about the events of September 11, 2001 both predictably, as I will most certainly next Monday on the 22nd anniversary of the day, and unexpectedly as I did today when I read this poem by Wislawa Syzmborska posted on the Poetry Monday website yesterday.

Teaching in a school where, from the nearby shore, students could view smoke rising from the ruins in New York City on that day, everything that happened was personal, proximate, and profound. Each successive 9/11 brought both the possibility of a fresh start as another school year began and the need to find a way to remember, to remember, to heal, to share.

With my eighth grade students, old enough in the five years immediately following that day, to harbor vivid and disparate associations, the commitment was a balancing act. I turned to poetry as we did on many days, an invitation for “Sacred Writing Time, ” ten minutes dedicated to our notebooks. “Could Have,” a poem I first shared on 9/11, was one that evoked some of the most powerful responses and conversation.

So much of the time adults seem to have answers, but as teens approach that threshold, they realize that sometimes there are no answers; sometimes we all struggle with the unknowables irrespective of age. This poem invited them to sit with one person’s thoughts about that in language they could visualize, complexity simply rendered.

Some students resisted the interpretations of their peers, the ideas of the poet; some embraced them. Almost all paused and thought, and shared stories of how they had been lucky, or not so much, stories about the role chance plays in our lives. And most, because of the date, reflected on those who had been victims, the unfathomable whys and why nots.

When I read the poem now, I can picture the earnest faces in that room, feel their engagement with the world they are navigating, the one where “your heart pounds inside me.” Still…