One Voice

On September’s tragedy and caught unaware,

we sang of a blessing on America, standing

together on the steps of the Capital and

in our schools and churches and any place

we gathered to mourn and to console, promising

not revenge but a united America, standing

tall and proud and strong, our hands joined

and our hearts, our voices, too, raised in one voice,

one heart, one solitary spirit, one America.

And time passes, stagnates perhaps, stuck

in that moment of hatred still lingering, evolving

and morphing into a new hatred turned to anger,

a new us against them, whoever is us,

whoever is them, a pettiness about our differences

of skin color and faith and political parties,

of social status and wealth, power and fears,

of our perceptions of the ideologies that bind us

together, one nation indivisible, liberty and justice,

self-evident truths. And I wonder what it will take,

as before, to raise again that one voice in song,

and how many more must die, tragically, praised

as heroes, yet their lives lost and the futures

they might have had, we might have had, gone

in our vanity, in our pettiness, forgetting

September 11 and what we stand for,

what we stood for, our voices raised in song,

the promise of a blessing that did not last:

one nation under God, indivisible.