The elementary school bus I grew up riding, nearly an hour each way to and from school, was an ongoing nightmare. Fights, bullying, cruelty, all egged on by our horrible bus driver. That school bus has appeared and reappeared in many of my novels, always as a place of fear and torment. (There’s a reason I’m a fiction writer.)
We can replicate that kind of cruelty or we can push back against it. It’s beyond exhausting and beyond terrifying to see our current vicious administration rise up against our fellow humans. We are all in this together. We will all come to an end one day. Those who called from the planes and towers on 9/11 were calling with messages of love.
Nine-Eleven, by Charlotte Parsons
You passed me on the street
I rode the subway with you
You lived down the hall from me
I admired your dog in the park one morning
We waited in line for a concert
I ate with you in the cafes
You stood next to me at the bar
We huddled under an awning during a downpour
We dashed across the street to beat the light
I bumped into you coming round the corner
You stepped on my foot
I held the door for you
You helped me up when I slipped on the ice
I grabbed the last Sunday Times
You stole my cab
We waited forever at the bus stop
We sweated in steamy August
We hunched our shoulders against the sleet
We laughed at the movies
We groaned after the election
We sang in church
Tonight I lit a candle for you
All of you
Although today’s poem has been featured on hundreds of websites I’m unable to find out any information about poet Charlotte Parsons other than that this poem first appeared on The Writer’s Almanac on September 11, 2017. This leads me to suspect that Charlotte Parsons is a pseudonym for someone else. If anyone’s in the know, please clue me in.
alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter
Alison McGhee 
Dear Alison, Again your weekly e-mail really gets to me.
I spent 30 years in charge of school bussing in some fashion for school in various communities.
When videos were introduced to see what was going on in them during the ride to and from school, I saw what you experienced. That form of violence, unsupervised, by children against children was and still is the earliest sign of the kind of adults the bullies will become at the expense of years of suffering by those who are and were bullied. To this day, this is still the one area were young children are unsupervised as a bus driver can’t both drive and observe the quick action of a bully. Which brings us to the current state of affairs in your homeland, and many parts of the world . It appears that bullies are now ruling with impunity on their “neighbourhood” and their victims are doing all they can to defend themselves. Not unlike them being on top of the hill in the school yard ! In the process, words and actions are exchanged creating a serious and ever growing divide amongst the “neighbourhood”. So who will stop the divide, lower the temperature ? We will, we must. It is our neighbourhood after all.
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Oh my dear Mario, I could not agree more with every bit of your comment. Violence, violence, and my constant silent question: why do people follow bullies? I’ll never understand it and will keep working against it for the rest of my life.
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Hi Alison….Another beauty. Thank you.As one of your South Mpls neighbors (and a fan), I assume we have stood
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Hi Barb! I think this comment got cut off, but I think we’re compadres. I’m so glad you love the poem. So do I.
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