The world did not collapse today,
although it tottered on the edge again
as it does most days in recent memory.
As a child we expected the world might end
unless we hid under our desks
when the alarms went off, so little
did we know about nuclear weapons
and what could be more useless
than a desk at or near ground zero.
We went through the pandemic,
the world uncertain of its origin or quite
what to do about it, hospitals overflowing
cemeteries filling, funerals postponed
until some future date for the survivors.
But that day it took no plague, no war,
and the only weapons were never
thought of as weapons before, but
that day, as the towers fell, for a moment
the world collapsed into silence and fear.