The Daily Boost #770

Dependence Day

Photo by Ryan Kwok on Unsplash

Here’s another nod to the (In)dependence Day holiday being observed in the US. The poem lifts us out, out, out of narrow nationalism . . .

DEPENDENCE DAY
John Daniel

It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks
or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag,
a day of staying home instead of crowding away,
a day we celebrate nothing gained in war
but what we're given—how the sun's warmth
is democratic, touching everyone,
and the rain is democratic too,
how the strongest branches in the wind
give themselves as they resist, resist
and give themselves, how birds could have no freedom
without the planet's weight to wing against,
how Earth itself could come to be
only when a whirling cloud of dust
pledged allegiance as a world
circling dependently around a star, and the star
blossomed into fire from the ash of other stars,
and once, at the dark zero of our time,
a blaze of revolutionary light
exploded out of nowhere, out of nothing,
because nothing needed the light,
as the brilliance of the light itself needs nothing.

(My thanks to John Daniel, via Poetry Foundation.)

The Gentle Nudge

Join other Rafters next week for . . .

• THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)