Ladder truck 118 crossed the Brooklyn bridge. in These titles mean nothing.

All six men on the truck were killed in the South Tower.

Lt. Robert M. Regan, 48
Joseph Agnello, 35
Vernon Paul Cherry, 49
Scott Matthew Davidson, 33
Leon Smith, Jr., 48
Peter Anthony Vega, 36

Of the 2,977 victims killed in the September 11 attacks, 411 were emergency workers in New York City who responded to the World Trade Center. This included:

• 343 firefighters (including a chaplain and two paramedics) of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY)
• 37 police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department (PAPD)
• 23 police officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD)
• 8 emergency medical technicians and paramedics from private emergency medical services[4]

per Wiki.

I bought a poetry anthology called The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. It was edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade.

One of the first poems I read was by Philip Levine.

Animals are Passing From Our Lives

It’s wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes (eight actually - the pig has a cloven hoof)
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.

I’m to market, I can smell
the sour, grooved block. I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers

that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the shouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies

suffering the consumers
who won’t meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy
who drives me along believes

that any moment I’ll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife

discovering television,
or that I’ll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.

The pig is a little like the firemen. They go where they must. It’s what life is about. And death is ahead for us all.

Last updated September 11, 2016