when i see America below
the great autumn rainbow
or
the airplane gliding over
the Grand Canyon

i think
how can
there be sorrow and despair
or the Six O’clock News?

how
can
there be cocaine, and murder
and the defiling
of everything?

when i see America below
i am
surrounded
by a music
so intense
                      there
is no other sound

bursts of light live
over the Mississippi
and the Colorado
                        good tumbles from the air
at dawn
at dark
                       (what are we looking for
in the heroin glass of the media?)

look below,
the glorious
wheel gliding,
the sacred fields
lakes and trees and the branching breath

of America