clcouch123

(x = space)

x

x

Birth of a Nation

x

It’s the Fourth of July

In the USA

It’s hard to miss

What with all the sales

In the computer

x

And all the local booms

That will happen

Between buildings

In the neighborhood

This evening

Upsetting dogs

x

The bell did not crack then

And the document

For the assembly

And the criers

Wasn’t ready then

More like the sixth

And no one need worry

x

A day was selected

For the start of freedom

And a nation

Approving thirteen groups

That did not want to fight

But would fight

A famous army

With a storied king

From faraway

Now home

x

Home needing freedom

From political

And corporate interests

That took more and more away

Until at home we said,

Enough

x

And war is war

It would not be kind

Or clean

Though ranks set on the field

Were tried

And when to start the battle

x

Really

How farmers

Children died

Holding guns

Or something enough like

To draw fire from the foe

x

There were strategies

And spies

And those with local knowledge

Of terrain

And somehow

Against the European mind

For monarchs

The war was won

By merchants and farmers

Fugitives and foreigners

Identified

Foregoing slaves

To free

Only to count

x

With vision to admire

Yet with fractures

Like the bell that was fractured at

Other times

Now we had to form a nation

With all the blunders

And the cheating

All the buildings

And the farmland

All the expanding

All the settling to come

With treaties

Skirmishes

And battles

We borrowed names

America

The United States of America

x

We asked for God

Too often after everything arranged

Maybe we could do better at that

Now

x

God is known in many ways

Inside this land

The values of the heart

And mind

And neighborhood

Remain the same

x

Reasons abound

For trying God first

Each day

In every time

x

In a nation born

x

C L Couch

x

x

United States flag painted on the side of a Saturn V rocket.

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, United States

x