One of Our Own

A poem

For Lowell

There are things which, said and true,
are of this generation’s past;
of fighting freedom’s battles
and of taking off the mask—

stories of the actions taken,
to blot out the blights of sin,
how heroes and the valorous
fought their enemies within,

of turning boldly with the light
to evil’s war against the truth.
And now that struggle is renewed:
given birth and a new youth.

We must fight this same malady
with courage and resolve,
for our nation is the sum
of the action of us all.

Would we be traitors to our
bugle, which beckons with its call?

—

Children used as bait to bargain
with their parents in deceit;
bodies lying lifeless, static,
shot dead, cold, in the street.

This has been the nation’s song.
Read of Adams’s decree:
There’s “Dignity” and “Majesty”
in tea thrown in the sea.

“Something notable And striking,”
he wrote in his diary.
One could not help but to see
an “Epocha in History.”

They quartered troops among them,
amid times of bitter peace,
when that massacre in Boston,
for a nation, stained a lease.

They won freedom for their people
but in fine print said: be damned.
To that man who said, of ham, they’d
“rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam”

the hypocrisy was notable,
and took some years to fight—
those critics of the sheep-stealer,
who in man-stealers delight—
Until those people stole away,
and set fire to freedom’s light.

—

Those things ripple and echo,
blaring loudly on repeat
that which would better a re-
public: from sea to shining sea.

Our nation needed purpose
and it lacked, almighty, God.
He who told of tribulations
warned us of the chastening rod.

As the great believer cautioned,
treachery says up when down;
it “scatters whole families”
without second thought or sound.

“New occasions teach new duties”;
again we’ve found this to be true,
and the only question lingering
is what are we to do.

Virginia
January 24, 2026