Picture and poem: ‘Spirit of America’

I wandered thru America
Trying to find a spirit
Of someone called Liberty.
Instead I found the tired, the weary, the poor.

I travelled along the highway,
Past the Rockies
And along the Mississippi.
Saw the hungry in Appalachia,
the dying towns along the way.

I spent the night in a shelter
Somewhere in the Bowery.
I found a man drowning
His grief in a bottle,
Victim of a safety net with too many holes.

I walked thru the city
Of brotherly love,
I saw a ten year old
Selling dime bags of crack,
Waiting for his mother to come back.

I walked thru the capital
Of this country
That I thought I knew.
Saw the slums
Obscuring the capital’s view,
Felt the depression hanging in the air.

I looked for only one
Of a thousand points of light
But it’s hard to see in the dead of night.
I heard a child crying,
Lost and confused,
Frail and worn,
Innocent and naïve,
Abandoned and alone.

Something within her stirred something within me.
I held her close,
I asked her name …
“Liberty” was all I heard.

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Works combined here have been used with permission. Photo by Matthew da Silva. Poem is by George Mercado (Twitter: @BklynMercado). If you’d like to submit a picture or a poem for use in this way, please feel free to get in touch.