Spacious Skies

It's Sunday afternoon and I just finished watching the inaugural concert that took place in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. What a terrific moment in American history! I was watching most of it with the warm sunlight streaming in my picture window and tears streaming down my face. Hope is a wonderful thing.

We've been in need of hope. Looking back over the last 10 years or so, when I think about Washington DC, I see Clinton-Lewinsky, Newt Gingrich, 911 crashes, Abu Ghraib Prison, waterboarding debates, even a Vice-President shooting his friend in a hunting accident. One thing is sure: it has been a long time since we had a government that was responsive to its people. A new government, one with strength and an optimistic vision, is reason to celebrate and to hope.

I haven't read Obama's book, so I don't know exactly what he meant by "The Audacity of Hope." But I don't think hope is audacious. I think it's as necessary as the air we breathe. Without it, we have boredom or fear, and despair, eventually.

Until I watched the concert, I didn't realize how divided, afraid, and alone we've become as a people. The theme of he concert was "We Are One," and the performers said it frequently. Sheryl Crow, Herbie Hancock, Pete Seeger, Beyonce, Shakira, Bono, Stevie Wonder, Garth Brooks, John Mellencamp, ("the voice of ornery America"!), a subdued Tiger Woods, Queen Latifah, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, and Renee Fleming all appeared. There were quotes from Dwight D Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lincoln, JF Kennedy, pictures of working people all across the country, information about the establishment of our great national parks, a little history about racial discrimination, a tribute to service people, and young choirs were backing it all up. A lot of the singers in the backup choirs were young African Americans, which was another good reason to be moved to tears. They have a chance now. I remember racial discrimination and hatred, the fight over desegregation and school bombings, the march in Selma Alabama, KKK cross burnings. Over the last 40 years, we have overcome.

If you get this message today, and didn't see the concert live, you might want to watch one of the rebroadcasts at 7 and 11:30 tonight, on HBO. It will be available to all cable subscribers, even those who don't normally get HBO.

One of the things that impressed me about the concert was the number of truly inspired songs that have been written over the years. So I thought I'd retitle a little poem (my version of a song, I suppose) that I wrote last week, and offer it here. It's sorta simple and humble, about my little corner of the world. Maybe that's fittin. My country. O Beautiful for...

Spacious Skies

A big white moon walks
the fields between the
eastern Rocky canyons
and the Wellsville mountains
to the west tonight. A January moon,
as big as we'll have all year,
turns its face to the Mormons
who count their fair,
freckled children,
turns a light on the frosted universe,
turns itself into the sea of snow fields,
calls to the lost owls
from its alien bronze halo,
and inches toward its destination:
a dip behind Chocolate Peak
to free the soft blue sky
as pink light
touches frothy clouds
crowded into
creased slopes,
and shines into
my open heart.

After I wrote this, I had to go get an ice cream sundae, which actually looked just like a miniature version of the snow-covered Chocolate Peak, with whipped cream clouds snuggled into it. All that envisioning of snow and mountains led me right to the important stuff -- ice cream. Seriously, I love this place and its snowy mountains and fields, it's spacious sky and moons and vistas, the bright stars so far and the clouds that come so close. Every night when I drive back into the land that is only partially tamed, about 3 or 4 miles from my town, I become sort of baffled by the sea of snow. It hasn't really snowed for more than a week now, although plenty of it has accumulated and there is frosty fog in the mornings. But I'm impatiently waiting for the next real snow.

Let's hope the inauguration and the Obama presidency will clear off the fog that has overtaken this country, and bring inspiration and renewal to the American people and the world. I'm confident that we will have hope again, at least for a little while. I'm even more confident (and almost flabergasted) to realize that we live in a country that really means it when it says it stands for liberty and justice for all.