Wistful Thinking - Columbia...
The people's goddess,
Part caricature,
Lady Liberty's elder sister,
Protector in spirit of the Underdog,
She is wrapped in an archaic and tattered flag,
Threadbare and mud-stained,
With blood at her feet.
What happens when goddesses are all but forgotten?
Rot,
Decay,
Withered trunk,
Yellowed laurel leaves,
Yet with life under the soil,
Roots precariously alive.
She walks limping with a cane,
Sleeping under bridges,
A thousand purple hearts jangling her tattered pockets,
Thousands more littering ditches and landfills.
All for a lack of unity,
A missing depth of compassion,
The carnival barkers' auctioning of the great society.
Ghostly tears wash through tracks of concrete dust,
The bridges and railroads crumbling about her head,
A cloudy wreath for a dull halo.
The empty towns her feet have trudged,
Lifeless soil and vanished insects,
Frankencrops tended by robotic tractors,
Flaming faucets in delapidated farm houses,
The empty backyard swings rusting to nothing.
There used to be promise and honesty in a plow,
Eggs on tables and fish in creeks,
A land of an abundant future.
Columbia is humbled by the seashore,
Microplastic tatters falling from her dishevelled raiments,
Waiting for us all to look up from our screens,
Actually see our neighbors and our world.
Long ago it was said all that glitters is not gold,
But I think everyone has forgotten.
United we stand,
Out of many are one,
So it was said.
We were all once American,
And Columbia was our darling.
AquarianM
By: Daniel A. Stafford
© 04/14/2019