Rain washes the dust from train windows
as we barrel through the poem of America.
From New York to Chicago, I watch it scroll by—
frame by frame and line by line.
Rivers and lakes reflect the pale winter sky
and haunt my vision.
America, what you were,
and will be again—I see you
in silos rising like fists from farmland.
America, the land itself says, “Fight!”
America, I see you in chipped brick walls
stained with faded logos.
I see you there, waiting
to rise from gone-under towns
and cities spangled in endless dusk.
We can see you now
emerging from boarded-up corner bars,
baseball fields barbed with weeds,
hollowed-out churches
and factories folded in on themselves
like crushed cans reclaimed by the wild.
And we see you, and we know you
in ragtag families packed into vehicles
to head to church on a Sunday,
or to visit a grandfather who remembers war
and what it means to survive
for love of the country that survives because of him
and his brothers—gone.
America, for love, we go on.
America, you defy the narratives
imposed to poison your majesty.
All the poison imposed
to warp us away from our axis:
the true, the beautiful, what binds us
to a shared reality
sealed under the hand of God.
Americans, may we all wake
to the dawn, this day,
with courage,
for we are the whirlwind
promised by patriots
who fought to the depth
of a last breath
to birth America.
And we are here—
there is no other time—
to watch her rise again.
Today is a day of deep mourning for half of America and a day of cynical indifference for the other half of America. May we bridge the gap in the near future or fall into the darkness of a failed dream.
Northern Desert Photography 