Nature Boy

An Ode for America

By: c - Oct 29, 2017

Nature Boy

Not just an American
I am America
It’s every bit of me
Mountains and sea
Mother Earth
Part and parcel
The very essence
Forests once primeval
Pure and pristine
Before Europeans came
Hopes and dreams
Including my ancestors
Irish and Sicilian
More benign than most
Slaughtered no Natives
Owned no slaves
First generations
Scratched the earth
Tilled hard scrabble soil
In rocky Rockport
Sold fruit in Brooklyn
Spawning me it seems
Owner of this earth
Surveying all I see
Mountains and prairies
Feasting on bounty of oceans
Visiting National Parks
At least for now
Set aside for all of us
Bulwarks against greed
Towering trees
Deep gorges in the earth
Polluted lakes and rivers
Running through them
Once leaping with trout and salmon
Deer, bears and antelope
Tsunamis of buffalo
Packs of wolves
Culling the herds
All mine this land
In the traditions of
Walt Whitman and Woody Guthrie
Their sanguine poetry
Traveling troubadours
Richly wrought verse
During war and depression
Just rephrasing and updating
Lest they be lost
Shut down like filibusters
Informed verbal protestors
Against defilers of
Our precious land and heritage
What’s left of global dignity
Assaulted by ignorance and greed
Prejudice and intolerance
Still proud to be an American
Though bashed and battered
Sullied and assaulted
All through the nightmare
Our flag still stands
This land is your land
This land is my land
Don’t tread on me