Thank you to the Saturday Poem - As Things Ought To Be

I studiously avoided thinking about the 15th anniversary of September 11th. 

Instead I co-lead, along with Kelli Russell Agodon, Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women. This year, my September 11th was filled up by thirty women poets writing, laughing, and learning together. 

I did such a good job focusing on women poets and not past horrors that I was surprised when "Mohamud at the Mosque" was chosen for the Saturday poem, As It Ought To Be. 

I began this poem 6 months after September 11th 2001 and finished it more than a year later. When I sent the poem out to magazines for publication, no one wanted it. Eventually, I was honored to have Poetry International choose to publish "Mohamud at the Mosque"  and a few years later it appeared in my second book, Cures Include Travel. 

So more than ten years after its first publication, here it is again.

MOHAMUD AT THE MOSQUE
By Susan Rich

          ~ for my student upon his graduation

And some time later in the lingering
blaze of summer, in the first days
after September 11th you phoned –

if I don’t tell anyone my name I’ll
pass for an African American.
And suddenly, this seemed a sensible solution –

the best protection: to be a black man
born in America, more invisible than
Somali, Muslim, asylum seeker –

Others stayed away that first Friday
but your uncle insisted that you pray.
How fortunes change so swiftly

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