Haibun: American Summer

America, art and song. The song of America heard in her summers: the popping ember floating into a green pine needles, the lapping of a lake against the dock, the ocean turning pink under the setting sun, and the cactus standing tall against the red rocks. It’s the song of land cutting the stories of people and spirits long before colonization interrupted it.

The art of America, painted in detail and rich colors; art seen with eyes, heard with ears, and wrapped around my heart. The art we’ve come to call “America” is this land as your land, my land, the land of democracy. The art of America is the remixing of Walt Whitman, Sojourner Truth, and Woody Guthrie. It’s the poems, speeches, sit-ins, marches, and the songs that war against fascism and other oppressors. It’s the murdered workers of the Harlan County strikes and it’s John Lewis and his smashed head at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. You could hear it when Cesar Chavez’s stood amongst the people who picked fruit. It’s a song of realized freedom, the chorus of “We the People”— a song harmonizing the ups and downs of ridges and canyons that cut her inlands and steady held notes of her plains and prairies.

Always remember, to step into the street to protest or into the wilderness to find adventure are both acts of freedom and the letting go of oppression. Maybe it’s the soil that grows such untamable life? …because there is no voice separate from the land that grew it.

So go forth and sing America! Sing loud America in summer, oh sing! “Summer in America, summer of welcomed surprises, song of adventure.”

…And let this song pass through the ears and off the lips of yet another generation.

alligator eyes,

at least in it’s rise, rock walls

summer of surprise