and got lost looking out the window
the bright sunshine gleaming
on the still-white snow
of yesterday’s blizzard,
branches popping in chorus,
freed in a puff of melt
from the weight
of white clumps.
Whose America might
I have written anyhow?
The America of placards,
of costumes and shouts?
The America of pretense,
of safety, of status quo?
The America of hard work,
of living the dream?
An America, with all its chest-puffing
missile-might, its misspent dotage
that brings me shame?
Who is my America?
Here she is, a sapling,
surviving, reaching
for light in the shadows
of surrounding
pine, oak, and hemlock,
their networks of roots
gone dormant in the freeze.
What does she have to say,
to strive for, huddled
into herself, hunched over,
head buried in snow,
a dancer in bow,
waiting for the sun
to do his work,
waiting to burst out
from under a heavy thumb,
to spring back
in release?
the bright sunshine gleaming
on the still-white snow
of yesterday’s blizzard,
branches popping in chorus,
freed in a puff of melt
from the weight
of white clumps.
Whose America might
I have written anyhow?
The America of placards,
of costumes and shouts?
The America of pretense,
of safety, of status quo?
The America of hard work,
of living the dream?
An America, with all its chest-puffing
missile-might, its misspent dotage
that brings me shame?
Who is my America?
Here she is, a sapling,
surviving, reaching
for light in the shadows
of surrounding
pine, oak, and hemlock,
their networks of roots
gone dormant in the freeze.
What does she have to say,
to strive for, huddled
into herself, hunched over,
head buried in snow,
a dancer in bow,
waiting for the sun
to do his work,
waiting to burst out
from under a heavy thumb,
to spring back
in release?
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Carla Schwartz lives half the time in the greater Boston area, and the other half on an unbridged island in Lake Winnipesaukee. Her poems have appeared in her collections, including Signs of Marriage, and she has received the 2026 New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen Prize. Learn more at https://carlapoet.com, or on social media @cb99videos. Recent curations: Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Cider Press Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, One Art, Rattle Magazine, Pork Belly, and Silver Birch.
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