FIRST RESPONDER
I was the first to arrive
though bystanders stood
immobile. My legs wouldn’t move
but my training stepped forth.
My arms reached out.
My hands dug thorugh rubble
that smoke filled day.
I raised bodies. In the night
my lungs gave out. Now
you want all I know.
I can’t recall one name, not even
the face of a brother who worked at my side,
his arm and my arm pulling forth a woman, alive.
I remember her scream and thought
touched by terror what happened to her
will keep happening for the rest of her life.
That’s not enough. You want more?
Will you think me shallow minded if I tell you
that day, until my last breath, I heard
the sound of cell phones ringing.
That Day
It was a clear day across the vista,
mountain ridges tufted with red oaks
and sugar maples turning a bittersweet orange,
joy in my heart a moment exploding
before I learned ships sank in lower Manhattan,
the fleet of two. On their decks passengers
from different nations traveling together,
screamed for their lives. Some tried to fly
through portholes. That day,
I learned the meaning of the word
machination: a secret scheme of artful design
intended to cause evil, that September day,
joy in my heart gone gray as ash.
Years Later - Still the Old Dream
Blue gown, a mask, blue feather in my hair,
I dressed for what I thought was a party.
Friends left in vans with no room for me.
I didn’t know if I was left behind for a reason
or if they waited asking, “What happpened to her?”
A stranger said she would help me get a flight
at the airport, but she left without pointing the way
to the terminal, then reappeared around a building.
I followed, but she vanished again through a storefront
with broken windows. I walked, lost. Past midnight
I found myself in lower Manhattan.
Men and women hurried past. They were not
the friends I was looking for, but I knew them
in that place lit like day.
A dragon-toothed machine ate rubble.
I began to gather scattered papers from the ground.
(small extra line edit for this narrow space only)
BIO Nancy Simpson
Nancy Simpson is the author of three poetry collections: Across Water, Night Student and most recently Living Above the Frost Line, New and Selected Poems published 2010 at Carolina Wren Press. She also edited Echoes Across the Blue Ridge (anthology 2010). She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a B.S. in Education from Western Carolina University. She received a N.C. Arts Fellowship and co founded NC Writers Network West, a non profit, professional writing organization serving writers living in the remote mountains west of Asheville and the North Georgia Mountains. For more than thirty years she has been know as “beloved teacher” to thousands of young writers.
Simpson’s poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Seneca Review, New Virginia Review, Prairie Schooner and in other literary magazines. Her poem, “Night Student” was reprinted in the anthology Word and Wisdom, 100 Years of N.C. Poetry and in Literary Trails of N.C. (2008) Seven of her poems poems are featured in Southern Appalachian Poetry, a textbook anthology published at McFarland Press. The Southern Poetry Review, Armstrong College in Savannah, Georgia included one of her poems in their 50th Anniversary issue, Don't Leave Hungry. Her poem “Carolina Bluebirds” was included in The Poets Guide to Birds ( Anhinga 2009) an anthology edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser.
Nancy Simpson lives in Hayesville, NC. Through 2010 she served as Resident Writer at the John C. Campbell Folk School. Presently she teaches Poetry Writing at the Institute For Continued Learning at Young Harris College.
LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE REVIEWED BY JAIMEE HILLS IN INDY NEWS- THIS BOOK A FINALIST
and other reviews and info about Southern and Appalachian writers
