The America I've known for most of my life,
And for which I've watched good and decent people strive:
Overcoming the Great Depression, Dust Bowls and disasters ...
Working through the horrors of McCarthyism,
Expanding civil rights and ending, mostly, segregation.
And a host of good things.
Sound diplomacy, mostly.
GOP Presidents, less than good, but mostly tolerable.
And too much given away to the rich.
But attention still paid to Working America.
Now, being trashed.
Tossed out on the rubbish heap behind a billionaire's home.
The American Worker savaged.
Mutuality destroyed by American individuality.
A poisonous me-first cluster-bomb.
Exploding across the land.
Racism rampant born again.
Misogyny revamped.
Here I am, 72, soon to be 73.
And my America is being thrashed and trashed.
By the greedy and the cruel
By religion run amok.
Evangelicals who are nothing more than Baalists.
Osteen lovers of wealth and dreamers of dominance.
Robbing the treasury of my nation.
Giving it away to the Philanthrobbers.
All is lost, it really is.
In a cesspool of GOP Chamber of Commerce.
Reliance upon the Almighty Dollar.
The Capitalist Way, the Truth and the Life.
I'll not look the other way.
Though a forthright view of things is hideous.
I'll not put on an alternative-fact smile.
Though tears are more than likely.
Now is the time to tell the truth.
The King has no clothes.
The promise of greatness is a chimera.
Birthed to win votes.
Tell the truth.
I think that's what my heroes did.
Jeremiah in the muddy well.
Isaiah in the temple.
Paul to the Romans when he spoke of grace.
And James to those who gutted the faith of life.
And John to those who cheapened love.
And Jesus to the bankers.
And Wycliffe and Huss.
And Luther and Calvin.
And Bonhoeffer and Barth and Bultmann.
And Martin Luther King, Jr.
All's well that ends well, is for sure.
I believe in the good ending.
But not always a good path in the meantime.
But the path upon which God walks with us.
I'll trod that path in the years that remain.
It'll surely be for others to clean up the present mess.
Cleanse the air and the water again.
And set the people free.
