pax
ONE love, blood, life
Written tonight after the VP debates...
“I Have Grown up in the Bright Light of America”
I have grown up in the bright light of America.
But now that light is flickering…
--Sen. John Edwards, 10/5/04
As a child in Pennsylvania, I made pictures
from plastic pegs, thrust through black construction paper patterns
and backlit to form illuminated images
of clowns and balloons, rainbows and stars.
Now, in this same precinct, I remember
when I would have thought
that a swing state would be New Jersey paved over with playgrounds,
or that flip-flops were just cheap sandals to wear in July.
I, too, grew up in America’s bright light, brought to me
by General Electric and Underwriters’ Laboratories.
I did not question it. I knew
that light came from the sky and from beneath my mother’s pleated lampshades,
and had no reason to believe that either one would fail.
You and I know differently now—
that we can put out the sun with a few renegade atoms,
or by our myopia and greed we can darken even our homes.
“We deserve better,” you say. I hope that you are right.
I hope that someday my child will, as I once did, believe
that America’s bright light is
a wildly colored bunch of flowers, a neon puppy, a fluorescent lollipop.
“I Have Grown up in the Bright Light of America”
I have grown up in the bright light of America.
But now that light is flickering…
--Sen. John Edwards, 10/5/04
As a child in Pennsylvania, I made pictures
from plastic pegs, thrust through black construction paper patterns
and backlit to form illuminated images
of clowns and balloons, rainbows and stars.
Now, in this same precinct, I remember
when I would have thought
that a swing state would be New Jersey paved over with playgrounds,
or that flip-flops were just cheap sandals to wear in July.
I, too, grew up in America’s bright light, brought to me
by General Electric and Underwriters’ Laboratories.
I did not question it. I knew
that light came from the sky and from beneath my mother’s pleated lampshades,
and had no reason to believe that either one would fail.
You and I know differently now—
that we can put out the sun with a few renegade atoms,
or by our myopia and greed we can darken even our homes.
“We deserve better,” you say. I hope that you are right.
I hope that someday my child will, as I once did, believe
that America’s bright light is
a wildly colored bunch of flowers, a neon puppy, a fluorescent lollipop.
