By
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Kids in the Dunsmuir High
School cafeteria
spend lunch hour, home
room time
with scissors, tiny gold
pins and yards
of narrow orange satin
ribbon.
When the simple loops
pile up like tangerines
in a tropical marketplace
they take handfuls, stuff
pockets,
fill a pretty basket, head
into town.
Before the sun sinks behind
cedars
and hemlocks bow their
drooping heads
and the September horror
ends
its second day, every person
in the small mountain town—
just-born infant to war-torn
graybeard—
wears the symbol. After
orange flames
burst through those twin
towers and
blasted thousands of lives
apart,
the orange ribbons tie
a town
together.
Patricia
Wellingham-Jones is a two-time
Pushcart Prize nominee,
author of Don’t Turn
Away: Poems About Breast
Cancer, Apple Blossoms at
Eye Level, and Welcome,
Babies as well as editor
of Labyrinth: Poems &
Prose. She has been published
widely in print and online
journals and anthologies.
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