An American Prayer

Is there a contradiction –

In the predilection

            to compare?

             the hour, the life, the moment?

When in sweet countenance, the sand

becomes a fragrance and drips, measuring

            greatness, or inferiority…

            in the present and the past…

My homeland is neither grand nor deficient,

Or it is both…

The sonnet of our collective youth

            wrote a parallel future. Inquiring

            in matters of sameness…

Contingent on issues of periodic vibration

 in the interest of our state

             The chorus of my grandfathers

to which I aspire splintered in application of intent.

has come home.  The revolution                   

Seeks to define the substance

             Of the justification.

The nobleness of the deficiency

is encompassed in the correctness of confrontation

in the journey to utopia.