RAY SUAREZ: I'm a New Yorker. As a teenager, I watched the Twin Towers being built. In the tough economic times of the late '70s, I strolled the World Trade Center food court and the underground shopping mall on my way to sign for an unemployment check.
I've covered news conferences in Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower. It was hard to believe such enormous, solid, seemingly permanent buildings, could collapse. To this day, I feel their absence whenever I approach the city from Brooklyn or New Jersey.
Poet Nancy Mercado, a fellow New Yorker, felt compelled to write about what she lost when the towers came down.
NANCY MERCADO, poet: "Going to work."
On their daily trips
Commuters shed tears now
Use American flags
Like veiled women
To hide their sorrows
Rush to buy throwaway cameras
To capture your twin ghosts
Frantically I too
Purchase your memory
On postcards & coffee mugs
In New York City souvenir shops
Afraid I'll forget your facade
Forget my hallowed Sunday
Morning PATH Train rides
My subway travels through
The center of your belly
Day after day
Afraid I'll forget your powers
To transform helicopters
Into ladybugs gliding in the air
To turn New York City
Into a breathing map
To display the curvature
Of our world
May 25, 2012
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