by Buff Whitman-Bradley
 |
| Source: Puzzle Warehouse |
Once again reality
Has collided with fantasy.
Once again the truth
About America
Has crashed into
Our pretty beliefs
About the basic goodness
Of our nation under God.
And once again
All the old cliches
Will be hauled out—
“Sure, we’re not perfect,
We make mistakes sometimes,
But at the end of the day
We’re still lucky to be living
In the Land of the Free
The Home of the Brave
From Sea to Shining Sea
Amen.”
And little by little
Memory of the latest grotesque injustice
Will fade.
We will go to the movies,
Watch the Super Bowl,
Have dinner with friends,
Take our kids to the park,
And recede back into
The collective dream
Of America the Good.
And we will be shocked
All over again
The next time a cop murders a black kid,
The next time a governor
Poisons a whole city with contaminated water,
The next time a hospital
Throws an indigent patient
Out onto the street,
The next time
A vigilante gets away with murder.
Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals. His most recent book is At the Driveway Guitar Sale: Poems on Aging, Memory, Mortality, from Main Street Rag Publishers. He podcasts poems on aging at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives with his wife, Cynthia, in northern California.