Wish I Didn't Know Now Poem by Sally Sandler

"Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then."
-Bob Seger, Songwriter, "Against the Wind"


Our generation once assumed

that change was due, the old ways doomed.

But now life ends without a boom

and barely a whimper … often too soon,

and in the algorithm a debt

to Mother Earth, from acute neglect.



That we would soon lose innocence,

first in a motorcade mid-Texas,

a jacket colored in blood, Chanel—

then Dante's Inferno and jaws of Hell

as husbands and sisters jumped and missed

the earth Ground Zero, a concrete abyss.



That one day we would closely know

the breath at death … the exhale slow

as fading twilight … and vigils at night,

and plead to the dying to look for the light,

the beacon that leads to heaven … but when?

With sorrow we know what we didn't know then.