I wrote this one during my open mike days nearly 20 years ago already. Not my greatest work, but somewhere between Norman Rockwell and John Mellencamp, not the varied shades of wing did this piece come to me. I got a couple of standing ovations when I read it back then, so, in the Spirit of ’76, the birthday of my country, which has its problems yet still has the capacity to shine brightly, here’s “Americana.”

Americana

Oh, take me there

somewhere on backroad Indiana

cape cods in Massachusetts

or upstate New York

where cornfields sway

to the consoling breeze of democracy

the land where homeboy politicians

dig up their grass roots

where contemplation and imagination

are nurtured in libraries

still made of brick

I’m in search of

Mellencamp’s pink houses for you and me

and Springsteen’s glory days so they don’t pass me by

where pickup trucks

are like pickup games of sandlot ball

all part of the norm

where women adorn themselves

not in ostentatious composition

but the in the veracity of continued existence

where life is thankfully naïve

and blind to the swinging corporate noose

where the day skies are bluer

and there’s no doubt

which Dipper is which

where people think nothing about wearing

foam cheese wedges on their heads

where Frisbees are more entertaining

than Playstations and iPhones

where the young grow up as they should

ultimately lost

to gridirons, baseball diamonds

and ice cream parlors

yes

take me there right now

where I can wave to the tractor brigade

then salute Old Glory

painted down their silos

and flapping high above their stalks of sustenance

where tomorrow’s Sunday

and nobody will be working, God bless

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.