Crossing America: July 4,2005
Crossing America,
I see small nations within its cities,
neighborhoods of people
who dream of happiness in myriad languages, and
who love America no less
because they cannot yet use the magic tongue.
A tenth generation American,
with roots that can be traced to
Boston gentry
and pioneers,
I wait in line
for a hamburger and milkshake with people who come from
the other side of the world,
still learning how it is done in the land of dreams.
Crossing America,
I hear children pledge fealty to our flag
and hope that what sometimes is
an exercise in thoughtless ceremony
will produce adults with unshakeable commitment
to what that flag represents.
Crossing America,
I feel the never ceasing breeze that sweeps
the prairies of our good fortune,
hear the soft whistle of wind through the tall
grasses of the Dakotas,
see the hot brown exhaust of Nebraska-baked feed lots
blowing east to mingle with the smoke from
the stacks of Gary and Elizabeth.
Crossing America,
I mistake the mountains on the horizon
for storm clouds, and am struck dumb
by the massive Rocky Mountain wall of sandstone and shale,
once an ocean bottom,
that rises up like a monolithic Wall of China
from the flat, legend crusted plains
of Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana.
Crossing America,
I am light headed, not only from the thin air above the tree line
in the Saw Tooth, the Wind River, the Tetons,
but the beauty of the twisted mountain pines,
the shriveled Douglas fir that have been raised by
never ending winds on the heights of the Continental Divide.
Crossing America,
I hide from the desert heat of Utah and Nevada
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poem by Ken Nye
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