South Fork Poetry: ‘September’

So you go about your life

but there’s a thread unraveling

Each year

the reading of the devastating list

each name hanging in the New York air,

the lips of their children,

their parents,

their wives,

dropping them into place

One woman

presses the back

of another

helping her go on

And still it goes

still only on the A’s

The bell rings

all of them the hardest

Strangers become relatives

The litany

develops its own rhythm

of thousands,

names carefully pronounced

back and forth

before the pause

on the ledge of sorrow

This one,

this one,

this one,

“and my love.”

Joanne Pilgrim is an associate editor at The Star.