And at what risk?
Whenever
I hear
my first generation
parents
talk of America—
the great wars,
Vietnam,
the Nixon years,
civil rights
and other
seismic moments—
I never detect
anything
but a deep,
yet sometimes
despairing,
love of country,
they call home.
Now,
I doubt,
thirty years
since their passing,
they’d recognize
what we’ve become.
I have no name for it.
All I know
is that it coils
around my throat,
and every morning
I awake,
the headlines
draw the feeling
tighter.
We are,
so it seems,
a country at war
with itself,
tearing itself apart,
shore to shore.
We were never
perfect.
But most times
we found room,
for other ideologies,
other hues and shades.
We were builders,
global traders.
We nourished,
always having
something left
for the poor
and oppressed.
Now the hand
of kindness,
that rarely closed,
combs the streets,
in an angry fist
of expulsion.
I watch
before my eyes,
and strangling
essence,
as we fall to pieces.
Were we always
this fragile,
the voting masses
waiting for a voice
that spoke
to their innermost
hurts,
their darkest fears?
A nation of believers,
in the disbeliefs
of others,
in a distrust
of science,
medicine,
even education
itself.
Together—we
somehow pulled
the globe
and its humanity
together.
Will we,
I ask myself,
ever regain
the strength
to reforge
the America
I knew and loved.
As the grip around
my throat tightens,
and sadness
wells in my eyes,
I choke
on my doubt.
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. Pushcart Prize
nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 280 poems, published on four continents.
