Can You Still Hear "America" Singing??

Can you still hear "America" singing?

(The word betrays our arrogance...

As if Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, or Venezuela

Were any less a part of the Americas.)

Or have we plugged our ears up with electronics..

Tied to umbilical cords of charging stations,

Blind to the voices of our fellow humans?

I enter the Amish farm market

And am serenaded by a woman's angelic singing voice.

Her plain clothes signify no dreams of commercial success...

Just the sweet contentment of a happy worker.

I hear "America" singing.

My ancestors arrived on the Mayflower,

Escaping religious persecution.

I hear their thankful hymns

As they unwittingly bring smallpox

To their native hosts.

The tribes drumming and chanting mixes with the sounds of birds

As red blood mingles with white in marriage vows.

I hear "America" singing.

The United States...

The Great Experiment.

Ben and Tom pen the words of self-evident equality,

Blind to the their biases of race and gender,

And give us the hopeful framework.

A raucous chorus of "Yankee Doodle"

I hear "America" singing.

Jim Wallis calls racism America's original sin.

I hear the spirituals sung in sun-scorched fields

Of scarred, sweaty black bodies

Foretelling of night flights

In a secret, subterranean railroad.

I hear "America" singing.

White faces are distracted,

Praising the progress of more visible trains

Connecting East with West

While drowning out the shrieks of red-skinned ghost dancers.

The genocide of the Trail of Tears...

But I can still hear "America" singing.

Ragtime and bicycles-

Ships of immigrants greet the Lady in the Harbor

Weaving tunes in their native tongues

While toiling in unsafe factories.

I hear "America" singing.

Sister suffragettes linking arms,

Songs of solidarity to fend off assault

Learning to dance the suffrajitsu

I hear "America" singing.

Despite being conceived in sin of racism,

Muddied in colonialism,

Seduced by Gilded Age greed,

"America" has birthed some epic music.

The hardships of Jim Crow begat the Blues,

Jazz tunes wafted through Harlem and New Orleans,

and Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit."

Scotch-Irish ballads nourished Appalachia

The very soil of traditional Folk

And the dust bowl and union-busters

Brought forth Woody Guthrie and the Protest Song.

J Edgar Hoover created the Red Scare,

Blacklisting and muffling Pete Seeger

Until Johnny Cash gave him his voice back...

Yes, Johnny Cash and the evolution of Country music.

Native American drumbeats, Rhythm and Blues, Boogie-Woogie, Doo-Wop

All rolled into rock-and-roll

California Surf sounds...

And what of Motown and Soul?

The soundtrack to MLK's Dream.

That morphed into the Rock of the Civil Rights Era

Psychedelic, Heavy Metal,

Folk Rock War protest songs.

Latin rhythms infusing Disco...

Then came Hip Hop

The cadence of black preachers evolved into Rapp

The list goes on...

St Joan Baez

Our Lady of Perpetual Wisdom

Said #45 was elected because we were not listening....

"America" has sold her soul at the Crossroads,

Seduced by concern for those yet to be born

And wanting cheaper eggs.

The voices of the vulnerable have been drown out-

The school yard rhymes of children already here,

The psalms of lament from the poor,

The dirges of fleeing refugees,

The lyrics penned by prisoners,

The protest songs of immigrants,

The shouts of the rocks and trees.

The cries of the Earth itself.

Yet, I can still hear "America" singing.

I hear her music in the vocalizations of my nonverbal friends,

My friends with intellectual disabilities.

I hear her in the whistled tunes of volunteers

Who build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

I hear her in the worship songs

Sung faithfully at the local prison Bible Study.

I hear her in the Muslim call to prayer

When I think of a sweet Afghan refugee

Who fled the Taliban and forced marriage.

I hear her voice in the ocean surf,

The rustle of wind in the trees,

And the crack of thunder in the sky.

In every loving act of ordinary people,

Every bird chirp and bee buzz,

I hear "America" singing of deep lament

AND extraordinary hope.