Community Corner
9/11 And The Aftermath Through Poetry: Sing Peace!
The last of four poems written by a Creve Coeur Patch reader in the days and month following the terrorist attacks on the United States.
have been looking at the ways our nation has been touched by the 9/11 attacks and the decade which has followed.
We've asked you to share your thoughts and perspective. Creve Coeur Patch reader Barb Poposky sent us a series of poems she wrote in the aftermath of that tragic day.
In an email to Patch, she last one she wrote, just prior to the first anniverary of the attacks. She said it was written "In response to a culturally pervasive negativity & prejudice that I was seeing emerge in America, that was blaming an entire group of people for the actions of a minority within that group; this poem is written from a child's point of view, due to me trying to answer more questions about that same negativity & prejudice from my children, who were in elementary & middle school at the time..."
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Sing Peace!
Find out what's happening in Creve Coeurwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Tell me, Mommy, when did I learn to hate?
Was it when I was two?
Or five, or was I eight?
Where did I learn which people I should beware?
Was it at home or school?
At church? Just in the air?
I just don't understand why color of skin
Is so important.
Look, he's fat! Oh, she's so thin!
This person prays to Allah; this one worships God.
Some seek their Higher Power
In sea or sky or sod.
She wears designer clothes, the latest fashion trend.
This one is wearing thrift store finds:
How can the two be friends?
Somewhere somehow sometime the differences I see,
That I was blind to once
Are all too clear to me.
It seems to me though that I can recall a day
Not so far in the past
When my friends came to play.
It didn't matter if their skin was light or brown.
If hair was straight or curly,
Eyes slanted, large, or round.
We didn't worry over worldly cares or strifes:
All our games were innocence,
We shared a love of life.
When will the grown-ups learn what we knew way back then?
Instead of all the wars and hate
That we can live as friends.
Sing peace! Cry all the children everywhere!
Sing peace! 'Cause they've a lesson to share!
We're not born hating, that is something we learn;
That must be changed or it's their future we burn!
Sing peace!
Sing peace!
Sing peace!
Sing peace!
--- Barb Poposky ---
--- September 7, 2002 ---
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