America
Author: Bill Roberts
I’ve just returned from a visit to America.
It was wonderful seeing our country again
in all its glory, magnificent in sun and rain.
We saw bison we could almost reach out
and pet from our rental car, elk and pronghorn
antelope with their newborn, still wobbly.
Moose are as ugly as I remember and as beautiful
as I care to imagine – real, live, three-dimensional.
Bear tried to come into camp too, to steal food.
It was cowboy cookout night, steak and beans and
coffee cooked over wood fires, the bears tempted
no doubt by the meat smells, possibly the caffeine.
There were no newspapers, radio or television
up there in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, still
so pristine it makes you weep for their future.
A new-found friend on the wagon ride back to our
cars told me Tim Russert had died, nearly knocking
me over, so young a man he seemed, so much family.
I wept a little, unabashedly, tried to see where we
in America are headed, then reflected on this great
landscape that still defines who we are, our grandeur.
Where will we go in the weeks and years ahead, trying
so hard to hold on to what we’ve been, uncertain about
what we might become, this awesome land of ours?
I have a feeling Tim Russert knew what the outcome
will be, and is ready to pose the difficult question:
Are we ready, do we have the gumption of our forebears?
(Published in the Fall 2008 issue of Bellowing Ark)
Note: Irene and I visited Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park in early June, 2008. With us were two sets of old friends from France, Philippe et Francois Berge, plus Philippe et Francine LeBoucher, as well as brother Jim Roberts and his wife Laurie. It was snowing pretty hard when we landed late at night, but all went well thereafter. America, especially in the wild as we saw it, is magnificently beautiful, way too difficult for me to describe adequately. The news of Tim’s death pierced my heart, since I’d long been a dedicated fan. Tim, like my dear friend Diane Rehm of NPR radio, would ask the difficult question of pols and pundits, never aiming low, always after the truth, fairly requested. Folks like Tim and Diane are among our national treasures – America! – just like Yellowstone and the Tetons. Let’s preserve them – certainly their memory.
