M is for Marathon . . .

I'm waiting for news:
Will another plane fall from the sky?
Here and not over there
in some sunburned, far-off land
where people speak an
entirely different language
of violence.

We endure this new commonplace.
What began with innocence,
an annual challenge,
now neighbors watch neighbor;
we notice with a sharp sense of readiness
when a package is left, abandoned,
and our police and firemen walk
once again into the smoke left by bombs.
We have entered the 
age of the marathon,
no longer does the race twist 
on subterfuge,
a dropped golden apple. 
Instead we light candles to remember the dead
and tell each other: Never again.

When we traveled in Italy recently, we were told not to eat at MacDonald's -- not for the food; the restaurant was a target for terrorists. So, of course, we ate there when we would rather be eating pasta, but we ate there to make a point. That terrorists or the threat of terrorism would not change what we could do.Throughout that short meal, I kept wondering what our families would think if that day had been chosen for an attack. In London, so many bomb threats have been made at Harrods, the famous department store, that people routinely file out at the sound of sirens. Now we have Boston to remember, and I wonder again what changes are ahead.

Read what others have written to celebrate April, National Poetry Month:
NaPoWriMo at http://www.napowrimo.net/participants-sites/
A-Z Challenge at http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com