The Terror Muse

Sometimes the muse is terrifying, arrives in a fiery crash -when towers fall, when a whole country awakes to its vulnerability. I remember that September morning as I remember the day on which Jack Kennedy was assassinated, the day on which Martin Luther King was assassinated. On Sept. 11th 2001 an essential American sense of safety was murdered.

Dan and I were waking to NPR’s “Morning Edition,” as we did most mornings, when images of planes crashing and people leaping to their deaths filled our heads. I find it hard to believe it has been ten years, hard to believe how much our world has changed.



The muse came to me in the voices of those whose lives were extinguished that day. I wrote a pantoum -a form in which lines are repeated- to give voice to the dead on both sides of the terrible story. The poem, “Voices from the Ashes,” can be found in my recent collection “adagio & lamentation.




voices from the ashes

where is my body?
who brushed teeth kissed the baby made the early train?
whose spirit’s been knocked beyond breath?
whose soul keeps running down a gone stairwell?

who brushed teeth kissed the baby made the early train?
whose burning heart whose exploding lungs?
whose soul keeps running down the gone stairwell?
where are my bones?

whose burning heart whose exploding lungs?
who wanders streets shows strangers your smiling blown up photograph?
where are your bones?
take my blood its all I have to give

who wanders streets shows strangers your smiling blown up photograph?
whose hole whose holy whose ground zero?
take my blood its all I have to give
watch my red life stream into vials and vials

whose hole whose holy whose ground zero?
I give you the life you stunted bombed in Baghdad made a prisoner of Sharon
watch my red life stream into vials and vials
for I with only a box knife have brought your towers down

I give you the life you stunted bombed in Baghdad made a prisoner of Sharon
I have crashed your Pentagon I am David I am Geburah
for I with only a box knife have brought your towers down
I am your nightmare I poison your waters I blow up your bridges

I have crashed your Pentagon I am David I am Geburah
you the high and mighty carry buckets sift through rubble
I am your nightmare I poison your waters I blow up your bridges
steel has melted buildings keep burning all is sulphur

you the high and mighty carry buckets sift through rubble
we come from the same story your Abraham is my Ibraham
steel has melted buildings keep burning all is sulphur
your ashes are my ashes

we come from the same story your Abraham is my Ibraham
the veil is ripped Azazel has his day
your ashes are my ashes
where is the angel Raphael healer of wounds?

the veil is ripped Azazel has his day
where is your body?
where is the angel Raphael healer of wounds?
whose spirit’s been knocked beyond breath?

(First published in Psychological Perspectives)

Some Reflections on Loss and Grief on Mother’s Day

On a recent Thursday my friend Cathy and I were having lunch—as we regularly do— telling each other stories from our lives as we have done since we were girls. There was a sudden commotion across the street from the restaurant: a procession of many children and some adults had turned the corner of Alcatraz Avenue and was marching down College Avenue. They wore blood red T shirts, and carried placards that read: “Peace. Non Violence. Adam we love you.” Sad children, weeping children, adults with solemn faces. They chanted: “Adam Adam Adam. We want Peace.”

We who had marched against wars and other atrocities, we who had been washed down the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall while demonstrating against the House Un-American Activities Committee fifty years ago—when we were students at Berkeley High— watched this procession with amazement and wonder.

What was being protested?

Who was Adam?

Adam, we learned, was Adam Williams, a young man, 22 years old, who worked as an aide and mentor in Peralta Elementary School’s P.E.A.C.E. after school program. He was shot outside Sweet Jimmie’s at Jack London Square on the night after Easter—an innocent passerby during an attempted robbery. I found his photo on line—such a beautiful young man.


Cathy has a son named Adam. I have a step-son named Adam. My children and step-children, including Adam, went to Peralta in the 70s. It was a wonderful school, diverse, challenging, creative. I gather it still is. I learned from the Peralta School Website that Adam Williams went to Peralta in the 90s and that his mother has worked on the support staff for years.

I don’t know Adam Williams. But I know something about how loved he was. The children whose lives he touched, touched me with their tears, their passionate protest against his senseless death, their hand written placards. One read “Be treated as you want to be treated. Mr. Adam, I miss you.”

I don’t know Adam’s mother, but I do know something about grief. My grandmother lost her two sons when they were in their early 20s. They had gone skiing. Their young lives were buried in an avalanche. This was many years before I was born. But her grief was my companion growing up. I learned that a mother who loses her child never stops grieving, never stops remembering, needs to keep that child’s memory alive by telling the stories. I wrote about this in my book, The Motherline.

Terrible loss, sudden death, unbearable grief are part of all our Motherlines. Go back far enough in your Motherline and you’ll find children who died too young, mothers who died in childbirth, fathers killed in war or on the streets.

Cathy and I stood at the corner of College and Alcatraz in the throngs of blood red T shirts whose slogan was ”Adam’s March for Peace.” We looked at each other with tears in our eyes.

One can think of this terrible story as an example of the mysteries of fate. Or one can see it as a symptom of a violent and gun crazy culture. Either way it is unbearable.

Cathy and I know that grief is part of every mother’s experience. Whether it’s grief for your baby growing up, grief for a child who is disabled or sick, grief for an adult child who is suffering, the capacity to grieve is part of being human, part of being able to love.

This Mother’s Day make room in your reflections for mothers who have lost their children. They do not stop being mothers. Remember the mother of Adam Williams. Remember how much he was loved.