Where Did You Go America?

The first time I saw her, I didn't know that it was her. She was a rusty swing set in a red-clay Oklahoma field. But I should have known that it was her once I propelled myself into the air and felt her kiss my face.

Without realizing it, I saw her again in a small mining town in Mingo County, West Virginia. She was a union card in the weathered wallet of a tattered man standing tall on a bent back and breathing deeply through black lungs. But I should have known that it was her when the man turned around, looked at me, and smiled.

She was there in the Florida Panhandle in 1977, but I didn't recognize her.

She stretched sideways from Crawdad Creek to Alligator Pond, and up and down from the green saw-grass glade to the blue sky. But I should have known that it was her because there is nowhere else in the world a child can feel that free.

I've seen her thousands of times since, and I know her face well now. 

She showed up as a volunteer in a soup kitchen in the District of Columbia. And in the home-run stare of a twelve-year-old standing at home plate.

She was a grizzly cub crossing a highway in Yellowstone National Park. She was a Vietnamese shrimper on the south Texas coast, and a businesswoman boarding a train.

She was a teacher-turned soldier after 9–11, two best friends sitting on the tailgate of an old farm truck, and protesters in the street. She is far more than a statue and far less than perfect. I knew her as a tough, sweet, two-fisted-tattooed Harley mama with a snake slithering down one hand, and a butterfly floating across the other.

She is everything and everyone. 

But just when I thought I knew her, really knew her, she became unrecognizable to me again. Now she hurls saliva and cynicism at people she doesn't even know.

She is a hateful bullet, a fear-infested zealot, and a con artist.

She has a taste for the silver spoon and ignorance of the empty one. She is as lost as a teenage runaway in a Seattle Greyhound station. She is as ugly as the past, bound to repeat itself and as striking as a future thrown into question. She is an out-of-touch politician and a righteously ignorant voter. She is both pride and punchline. She is the custodian of the promised land and a dystopian carnival barker.

I want her to apologize to me, but I don't know that I'd accept it. 

I want to apologize to her, but I don't know if she'd accept it. I think if we could once again show each other some grace, I would tell her I love her. And then lean in to hear her whisper it back. I would ask her honestly and without pretense: where did you go, America? And she would answer me truthfully and without spite.

"Where you led me to go."

Mark Elliott is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter and author. He has written for some of Nashville’s top publishing houses, including Sony-Tree, Maypop, and Bluewater Music. He’s a winner of the coveted Kerrville New Folk Award and had songs covered by both indie and major-label artists. Mark’s book, The Sons of Starmount: Memoir of a Ten-year-old Boy, is out in paperback and audiobook, and his new single, “Talk To Yourself,” is out now on all platforms.