A Word Salad for America: post-July 4th

"It does not seem to me ignominious to be a poet, if nature has made one a poet unexpectedly" ( George Santayana)
______________________________

 

Shoulders back, with toes entrenched

  in tidal sands,

the One  rich in shoyu & desert trains--

  America , who is

ever two-lunged patriot and lovable

  oil-pot;

a lucid dead heat to Houston , after

  another storm,

or the grin of the irrepressible kid

  or

the hilarity, the gun or what they call

  the 'hereafter'—

 

 

America , anagram of all these, combined

  with a 'love of Thee'--

 to you, irrepressible One, that can't

  face absences alone,

 then, I give the palm and my dear

  dear heart:

and all at once because I've witched & read

  you to death, 

keeping only the best and then because

  you're number One;
 

or, again, because first in the process

  of cute fervid shucks

you've helped me to slice the choicest side

  and by helping

pulverized me in kindness, done almost

  to death,

and then left me to write alone, alone

  to write 

about storms, guns or whatever you

  call Angels & Saints
 

because after I stormed your poets I kept only

  the best