A poet from the Ottawa Valley is honouring the lives lost on this day just over two decades ago.
David Robert Rae is a former military officer currently living in Renfrew. He explains that his poem, “Love After,” came to him just one year after terrorists killed thousands of people by hijacking and crashing airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York as well as the Pentagon in Virginia on September 11th, 2001.
He says what began as a collection of thoughts that came to him in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy would eventually develop into the work, but it would take some time.
Rae hopes that his words can act as a means of emotional release for people still grieving a loss from that day.
He recalls walking the area of ground zero in downtown New York some time after the attacks, noting that his thoughts on the event only took about half a day to make it to paper once the concept for the finished work came to him.
Hear “Love After” by David Robert Rae here:
(written by Kasey Egan)