This poem is about Tina Kelley, a reporter for The New York Times.

She comes to the poet's podium
joined at the waist with a pouch
that holds, unbelievably,
a five-day-old baby!

Reading beautiful and anguished
lines about her experience
writing stories of the victims of 9/11
and their survivors,
Portraits of Grief,
of hopes and dreams
burned
broken
fallen
sorrow nearly overwhelms
the young mother
filled with tears for grieving mothers,
grieving children,
children never to be born
herself so newly delivered
from the twin shadows
of death and birth,
now blinking into the light
as she reads to us
confronting survival.
—by Marcia Holtzman
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