America: The Fixer-Upper
This is how the world
found mid-twentieth-century
my lost America:
Divided by strife,
disillusioned, bereft–
not the world’s best hope!
Reaching for the stars,
yet mired, unwanted in
an un-glorious war.
Yet hope did emerge
from the youths’ idealism
about what might be.
For the entire world
saw the possibility
of freedom from want.
Each mid-century,
the U.S. remodels itself,
tossing out the old.
But it truly shouldn’t
throw out the baby with
the grungy bath water.