When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing, electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

~Maya Angelou

Not unlike other twenty-somethings, civic pride is not something I often felt myself brimming with. America: just this place where I live that is supposed to be so much better than anywhere else. America: land of freedom and opportunity. It is not unusual for those of us who were born in times of peace, to not understand what our land, our brothers and sisters, our country is supposed to mean. Each day we see aftermath of unspeakable horror that dots the eastern continent like spots on an orange. The crumbled remains of apartment high-rises in some unpronouncable city in some where-is-that country; burned-out, bombed-out charred remains of cars; women in tatters, clutching photos, weeping into aprons; rows of camo-clad men touting posters and pistols. These images flash across our evening news, across our living rooms, across our dinner plates. "Tsk tsk" we chide. "Oh, how awful" we quip. "So, what do you want to watch tonight, dear? Friends or Frasier?" That's all.

That's all until it is our backyard that is blown to bits. What do you feel when you see an image on live news that has only been seen in a movie theater? What do you feel when you see a man jump from a 20th floor because he can't breath the toxic fumes of death and jet fuel any longer? What do you feel when the heat of fire and the bruising of propelled debris is only separated from you by a picture tube? How do you push back the sickness in your throat, the hard knot of fear in your stomach, and the agonizing fountain of tears behind your eyes? We raise our fists in the air and want nothing more than vengeance.