{"id":12764,"date":"2013-01-22T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T00:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/?p=12764"},"modified":"2013-01-22T01:24:11","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T01:24:11","slug":"2013-inaugural-poem-one-today-richard-blanco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/2013\/01\/22\/2013-inaugural-poem-one-today-richard-blanco\/","title":{"rendered":"2013 Inaugural Poem: One Today &#8211; Richard Blanco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"580\" height=\"327\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1mDrk8AC4G4?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The following poem was delivered by inauguration poet Richard Blanco during ceremonies for President Obama&#8217;s second inaugural Monday. The text of the poem was provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One Today&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,<br \/>\npeeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces<br \/>\nof the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth<br \/>\nacross the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.<br \/>\nOne light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story<br \/>\ntold by our silent gestures moving behind windows.<\/p>\n<p>My face, your face, millions of faces in morning\u2019s mirrors,<br \/>\neach one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:<br \/>\npencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,<br \/>\nfruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows<br \/>\nbegging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper &#8212; bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,<br \/>\non our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives &#8212; to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did<br \/>\nfor twenty years, so I could write this poem.<\/p>\n<p>All of us as vital as the one light we move through,<br \/>\nthe same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:<br \/>\nequations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,<br \/>\nthe \u201cI have a dream\u201d we keep dreaming,<br \/>\nor the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won\u2019t explain<br \/>\nthe empty desks of twenty children marked absent<br \/>\ntoday, and forever. Many prayers, but one light<br \/>\nbreathing color into stained glass windows,<br \/>\nlife into the faces of bronze statues, warmth<br \/>\nonto the steps of our museums and park benches<br \/>\nas mothers watch children slide into the day.<\/p>\n<p>One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk<br \/>\nof corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat<br \/>\nand hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills<br \/>\nin deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands<br \/>\ndigging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands<br \/>\nas worn as my father\u2019s cutting sugarcane<br \/>\nso my brother and I could have books and shoes.<\/p>\n<p>The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains<br \/>\nmingled by one wind &#8212; our breath. Breathe. Hear it<br \/>\nthrough the day\u2019s gorgeous din of honking cabs,<br \/>\nbuses launching down avenues, the symphony<br \/>\nof footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,<br \/>\nthe unexpected song bird on your clothes line.<\/p>\n<p>Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,<br \/>\nor whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open<br \/>\nfor each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,<br \/>\nbuon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos d\u00edas<br \/>\nin the language my mother taught me &#8212; in every language<br \/>\nspoken into one wind carrying our lives<br \/>\nwithout prejudice, as these words break from my lips.<\/p>\n<p>One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed<br \/>\ntheir majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked<br \/>\ntheir way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:<br \/>\nweaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report<br \/>\nfor the boss on time, stitching another wound<br \/>\nor uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,<br \/>\nor the last floor on the Freedom Tower<br \/>\njutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.<\/p>\n<p>One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes<br \/>\ntired from work: some days guessing at the weather<br \/>\nof our lives, some days giving thanks for a love<br \/>\nthat loves you back, sometimes praising a mother<br \/>\nwho knew how to give, or forgiving a father<br \/>\nwho couldn\u2019t give what you wanted.<\/p>\n<p>We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight<br \/>\nof snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always &#8212; home,<br \/>\nalways under one sky, our sky. And always one moon<br \/>\nlike a silent drum tapping on every rooftop<br \/>\nand every window, of one country &#8212; all of us &#8212;<br \/>\nfacing the stars<br \/>\nhope &#8212; a new constellation<br \/>\nwaiting for us to map it,<br \/>\nwaiting for us to name it &#8212; together<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/richard-blanco\/making-a-man-out-of-me_b_2507024.html\" target=\"_blank\">Make a Man Out of Me &#8211; Richard Blanco<\/a> &#8211; Huffington Post &#8211;\u00a0Posted: 01\/20\/2013 9:29 am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following poem was delivered by inauguration poet Richard Blanco during ceremonies for President Obama&#8217;s second inaugural Monday. The text of the poem was provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee. &#8220;One Today&#8221; One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[753,1782,1123,1212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homophobia","category-lgbtq-related","category-obama","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pXBbJ-3jS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fadingad.com\/fadingadblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}