The Fourth - Gail Onion

[Lawrence Robinson]

The Fourth

We, the people
celebrate
that we gave democracy 
a good try, 
that we cared but not
enough, 
that we like some of the
people but not all of the people, 
that we can no longer be a nation 
founded on good intentions,
built by slaves and stolen 
from the first peoples.

We
can no longer praise
inalienable rights 
that are vanishing day by day
that are rights for some who
can buy them or bribe them,
whose mendacious 
tongues wave like flags
as truth is murdered
in a lawless time,
a time of more guns
than homes for the homeless,
a time when 
immigrants cannot enter
the closed hearts
of these disuniting  
United States.

For
we missed the small print 
that reads “only for some.”
The true celebration 
worth celebrating is freedom
to be who you are and love 
whom you love
and leave everything in nature alone,
Nature is not entertainment or
an amusement park
but holy lands and holy inhabitants,
We must remember 
that the peoples’ house
is the earth, for all beings who live here.
So we celebrate love 
in a country that lately sure looks 
like hate
banning books,
denying bodies
their autonomy,
denying the holocaust, slavery,
genocide, racism, our homophobia, our transphobia.

We 
destroyed
the amber waves of grain,
the purple mountains majesty,
the fruitless sterile plains.  
Our air and water beg for mercy.
Our children 
wear the faces 
of extinctions to come. 
We can walk outside 
into the beauty today
before us, beneath us,
above us, beside us.
We can honor this day
in the continual revolving 
evolution
for peace, for love,
for a world to
walk with our ancestors 
who sacrificed for
a world for everyone.
We can make our lives 
devoted to the common good
of all sentient beings so
that democracy will be more than
a rumor, 
a thing for fireworks 
and grand speeches
with more greed 
and more sad stories. 
 
To those whom it will concern:

We, the people
will have our rightful
destiny of peace and justice.

We will 
have our dreams.

We will have our
freedom:

To live in
compassionate 
community 
with all beings who live here
on this,
our sacred 
earth.

	- Gail Onion