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”