Independence Day

The end of summer is contained in this, its hottest day.
Cupping a hot-feathered crow in both hands you lift it to the sun,
and the shadow that falls is the shadow of winter,
the touch of its slender black fingers on yours
is December's touch, the rise of darkness, the wind lifting,
the pepper-blinding sleet.

The torn flags struggling from their poles
tell a different story: freedom would be destruction,
one free breath and we would fall, to be next year's
rotting cloth snagged on the blackberries –
a cotton spiderweb on the thorns –
grayed with dust and wet with tire-splash;
an immobility compared with which this struggle seems
at least a ghost of liberty.

I have come all this way to tell you: we held the pass
till the Persian satraps fell out with each other:
your homes are safe, and the winter flows from
the summer from the winter, still, and you are safe;
but no one else is coming home. We are the winter
in your heart of summer: we are the flag that struggled free.