It was smaller than I had imagined. I had pictured a big ancient black leather Bible (Abe's Good-Book). A bright crisp blue day in January, the history and transition of a people.
I had left home, or so I'd dreamed. Gone away, far away from my place of birth. As on a journey, I now look behind, and the home I dreamed I left seems to have changed. The deep resonate voice of a thin man brimming with confidence told me the day he is inaugurated, I will look at myself differently.
And so I begin to long for home...the far cries of those I left behind...houses stained by the old red earth...neighbor-kids' feet dangling from summertime trees...laughter. I would come home...
I see clearly the skies of a place not thought possible. The mountains really are purple when the sun splashes across their face; amber waves feed my longing, as a deeply dark shroud seems to have been lifted.
I recall surf crash against rock, gulls lift and land, squabble over bits of what might be found. My memory hears wind rush through timber as I fall to sleep in a (real canvas) tent my dad would sweep and fold up after each trip and carefully put back in its original box.
I see and hear these things, and I start to turn. I begin to believe, with the advent of a new light that might not really be that new, that maybe home is a different place after all.
He raised his hand, nearly delivered his own oath of office, his beautiful, brilliant wife beside him, their kids gazing up into the blazing yet winter-weakened sun...I start to head back...
I am native, I am immigrant, I am hope, I am cynicism. I hold these truths and a few of my own here in my deepest heart. I call to a Great White Spirit, or to nothing at all; I dance the dance or sit on the wall, watching. I hope, I cry, weeping long for somebody to do something--at last realize...I am somebody!
Mine is to shed light. Not a light that blinds my neighbor nor myself upon its reflecting back into my own eyes...but light that only shares, knowing giving is receiving.
They danced and talked to far-away troops. They dazzled and inspired, and began the work. And I hear the bells. I'm coming home.