Happy Birthday America

He walked off, like the song said, “to look for America.”

Among the myths and ghosts of the west.

He heard their stories and breathed the open air of the high desert.

Tired of the emptiness and dust,

He soaked up the California sun among the flakes and the beautiful people

Feeling dry, he re-hydrated himself in the northwest and became flannel and green.

Saturated and heavy hearted, it was over the mountains and out to the plains…

Into vast spaces, where humankind are most industrious insects.

Seeking answers down the great arterial river into the Deep South,

Where the old ways and the humidity can stifle you.

Yearning to breathe free,

North again through Appalachia, green, old and poor, black with coal dust.

Missing some teeth, but holding sternly on to their dignity.

Wandering, aimless, into the iron of the industrial centers,

Factories and rust and the power of the working man.

Along the broad ways of the gleaming cities of money and power that line the coast;

Finding corruption and greed, but also culture and world-driving ideas.

What did you see my blue eyed son?

Are we living up to our potential?

Do we welcome the poor and the huddled masses as we said we would?

Has our zeal for a new nation become fevered pursuit of empire?

Are we squandering our freedom in lust for endless entertainment?

Are we shrouding the purple mountain’s majesty with smog?

Are we laying waste to the fruited plains?

Are we stepping on necks to get ahead?

Have we abandoned our high ideals in favor of mere survival?

Do things, instead of ideas, drive us forward?

Are we as good or as bad as we think we are?

You should be old enough now to answer these hard questions.

Snap out of your adolescent quest to find yourself.

The world needs you to grow up… now.

Happy Birthday America.