Hello and welcome to The Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern, and today is Friday, September 11th. Every year, September 11th is a day of sober remembrance as we remember the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11th, 2001. The Twin Towers fell. The Pentagon was attacked.

It was a day of deep, collective trauma and mourning. And so we remember and we grieve still for the losses

that took place in our culture and in the lives of specific people that day. And in honor of

September 11th, I'm going to read for you a poem by Billy Collins. Billy Collins is one of the

most prestigious, honored and popular poets in American letters today. He was born in 1941 in New York

City, and he's still writing and reading his poetry and offering his gift to the world.

Collins was the poet laureate from 2001 to 2003.

So he was the national poet at the time of the fall of the Twin Towers.

And in 2002, he was asked by Congress to write

a poem of remembrance and honor for those who gave their lives on the year before in 2001.

And today I'm going to read for you that poem. I'm going to do it a little differently.

It's a bit of a longer poem. And so I'm going to offer a few comments before I read it.

Just very simple comments.

It's a simple poem in which Collins reflects on the losses of that day to him personally and those personal losses, his own personal experience of learning and knowing the

names of people who died that day.

He reflects on that and describes his experience of that.

And in doing that, he invites us into his own grief and also reflects and mirrors back to us

our grief.

I'm sure everybody listening to this who was alive that day in 2001.

And we all remember what that was like to hear about a terrorist attack on American soil.

That was such a huge blow to us as a nation.

It made us feel vulnerable and we grieved together, we remember together,

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