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June 29, 2021

Revisiting

A year ago, with a madman in the Whitehouse, and no vaccines in sight, I wrote this poem. I share as we re-emerge into the world again….

4th

I had a dream in which

a man in a kimono made of 

American Flag Whales appeared.

Stripes formed their backs

with stars on the flanks

whale upon whale

like a pattern of

half moons, or scales.

It was unclear whether he had just

exited the Harvard Square Red Line stop

To join the march in progress

or to look in our open window.

It was also unclear why our apartment window looked out on the large patio 

in front of the Au Bon Pain where I used

to sit with a lemonade

after long nights of drinking

in the late nineties.

2.

If you grow up in America,

with a certain degree of privilege,

and are white, 

America is taught to you

as if from a car manual.

The car is already yours,

You just must learn its operation.

You learn about the wooden teeth,

But not the ones pulled without anesthesia.

You learn about the liberation of Auschwitz, but not about all of 

the Jewish refugees that were turned away by our government prior to that.

You learn about political instability 

in third world countries, 

but not the CIA coups.

You learn about the Founding Fathers,

with little to no mention of their slaves.

You encounter Sally Hemings

as a mistress, not as a rape victim,

and Rosa Parks as a sweet and stubborn 

old lady, who one day accidentally bent the arc of moral justice, 

not the committed activist, 

she actually was, who actually knew 

what she was risking on that bus,

and why.

3.

When I was a child,

the Fourth of July was a time

for corn on the cob, the silk and the husks

pulled back and buried in the backyard.

Suitcase races and Smartfood by the handful on the beach.

The large American flag hung in front

of my Great Aunt’s sleeping porch,

and illegal fireworks on our front lawn,

And of course we could be assured,

The Scituate Police would never be called

to respond to a noise complaint 

on the Irish Riviera.

4.

Flash to the present,

and no doubt, the red white and blue 

bunting still hangs from the stately

houses of Edgartown, 

but the giant inflatable rat will not be proudly displayed this year 

atop the “All Island Pest Management” float, as there is no parade.

Lakefront cookouts, here in Chicago,

will no doubt become vectors of Covid infection, 

because we apparently cannot bear,

“too much reality,”

and four months of not dying,

seems only to renew our death wish.

We will cross our fingers that parts of South Dakota do not burn to the ground,

because of the fireworks at Mt. Rushmore,

(again, they did not mention 

that this monument was carved 

into a sacred Native mountain

in the standard textbooks.)

Last year, we were able to listen 

online to a few minutes 

of the Boston Pops

playing live from the “Hatch Shell.”

I imagine for this year, 

a bravura production,

with fireworks to follow,

played to an empty Esplanade,

by the ghosts of 

Arthur Fiedler and Tchaikovsky, 

Aretha Franklin and Marian Anderson,

Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Little Richard,

Sharon Jones and Betty Wright, 

Biggie and Tupac,

and accompanied by Keith Lockhart

and the Boston Pops.

Ghostly music for all the ghosts,

of our American past.

Those who died in the “Middle Passage,”

Those who died of smallpox from the settler’s blanket,

Those who were lynched,

Those who died of AIDS while Reagan 

did nothing, and Bob Hope cracked jokes about the “Staten Island Fairy.”

As the music swells,

you can vaguely make out 

the ghosts of Lorena Hickok and 

Eleanor Roosevelt 

waltzing sweetly

on an abandoned dock.

And as the fireworks begin, 

the stately ghost

of Sally Hemings 

sets out on a white horse 

towards the “Freedom Trail,”

lantern in hand

to start back at the beginning, 

to shed light on all of the ways

that in America 

all men,

have never been “created equal”

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