America -- For All of This...

For native peoples who gave us succor and salvation from unknown threats

And taught us self-sufficiency and survival in a new and untamed land

For Freedom and hope — powerful flights of fancy to fuel our dreams

We worshiped like acolytes responding to the liturgical promise

Of redemption and forgiveness for the accidental sin of an inopportune birth

For rodeos, cowboys, and cattle drives through Dodge and Jackson Hole

Recalling a frontier tamed by Winchester and Colt

And for farmers and ranchers who transformed it into homesteads

For transcontinental vastness now filled with railroads and highways

With a single golden spike to tie it all together

For wilderness and wildflowers endowed with sweet perfume

Of jasmine and honeysuckle with moths as big as birds to tend them

For the earthen scent of newly plowed fields intermixed with

The oh, so sweet, smell of fresh-cut alfalfa,

Soon to be silage, fueling the pungent smell of money at the feed lots

For warm sun-soaked meadows of the Texas Hill Country

Calling barefoot boys to hook a worm and cast their lines

Inviting day dreams of saints Antonio and Francis

Who captured commerce and culture in missions and

More joyous thoughts of swimming and sport and baseball

For Vermont maple and Georgia peach, Rocky Ford melons and Iowa corn

No other, so fine or so prized, could be desired

Nor tempt us to stray from our allegiance to sweet

Agricultural pleasures, American produce and varietals

From farm to table, from vine to cellar

For Edsels, Kaisers and Frazers, Studebakers and model T’s and

Factories from which spewed virtuous fabrications like lemmings

Running off of the cliff and into middle-class garages

On suburban streets and in urban landscapes with

A relentless pursuit of paradise borne of passionate blue collars

For Spindletop and gushers, pumpjacks as thick as burrs on a hound

Forever bowing in ceremonial thanks

To roustabouts and roughnecks who traded toil, sweat and muscle

For fantasies of horseless carriages and silver birds

And for their cousins, stevedores and longshoremen who built vessels to conquer oceans

For ingenuity and imagination soaring like a murmuration of starlings

So large and iridescent, a living kaleidoscope — testament to the magical

Enchantment of visions and the musings of possibilities

Initiative exemplified by insight, fortitude and attitude

Producing no mere mirage but manifesting a myriad of miracles

For the wisdom of forefathers and the manifestation of destiny

For Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelts (both) who inspire

For Kennedys, John and Robert, stout-hearted, slain

For all of the heroes whose valor and courage

Makes us better villagers, better neighbors, better people

For the witness of hedgerows and hedge apples from Missouri to Colorado

Endless acres of heartland populated by boundless heart

Adobe in deserts, indigenous landscapes, and a canyon

So grand, carved by a river, one of the two Colorados, rivaling

Other mighty American flows — Mississippi, Missouri, Monongahela

For the twin towers which brought us together

And for our leaders who tear us apart

Both making us stronger and resolute

That we shall find our way back… back to peace

Back to primeval glory!

For all of this… we are grateful!