Tuesday, January 22, 2013

AOM Meditations: "One Today" by Richard Blanco


The following poem was delivered by Inauguration poet Richard Blanco during ceremonies for President Obama's second Inaugural Monday. The text of the poem was provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee. Richard is the youngest and first Latino and first openly gay Inaugural Poet.

Inaugural Poet 2013: Richard Blanco



"One Today"
by Richard Blanco

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
 peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
 of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
 across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
 One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
 told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
  
 My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
 each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
 pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
 fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
 begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
 on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
 for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
  
 All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
 the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
 equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
 the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
 or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
 the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
 today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
 breathing color into stained glass windows,
 life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
 onto the steps of our museums and park benches 
 as mothers watch children slide into the day.
  
 One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
 of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
 and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
 in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
 digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
 as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
 so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
  
 The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
 mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
 through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
 buses launching down avenues, the symphony
 of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
 the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
  
 Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
 or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
 for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
 buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos dias
 in the language my mother taught me -- in every language
 spoken into one wind carrying our lives
 without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
  
 One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
 their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
 their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
 weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
 for the boss on time, stitching another wound 
 or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
 or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
 jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
  
 One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
 tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
 of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
 that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
 who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
 who couldn't give what you wanted.
  
 We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
 of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
 always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
 like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
 and every window, of one country -- all of us --
 facing the stars
 hope -- a new constellation
 waiting for us to map it,
 waiting for us to name it -- together


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