The Garden of Verse: Hard This Year to Feel the Love on Our Nation's Birthday

Well it's July, and summer doesn't get more "mid" than this. It's a good time of year for a holiday to celebrate our country's birth, but this year what I'm feeling is -- well, what's the opposite of nostalgia? A sickness that is not composed of "longing"? 
          In America we proudly celebrate the birth of the first nation in modern times founded on a system of self-government. 
           But what if that system isn't working? As is rather spectacularly the case in 2018. 
           So when our editor at Verse-Virtual.com proposed the theme of "America" for the July issue, I felt the compulsion to -- 'rally around the flag'? Is that a phrase we can use when the flag has been taken prisoner by a scoundrel of the first order and a crew of pea-brained bullies? 

            Nevertheless before launching into my screed I began this poem with a reminiscent look at the conditions of life fifty years ago in America. 


You. Me. RFK.
Fifty years ago,
not much time in the fossil record
(by contemporary measure we're all fossils now)
but a considerable bite in a lifespan
No phones, no careers, no parents to speak of
No job beyond short-term janitoring in college dormitories
Viewed in the antique light of old snapshots, recollected in selfish nostalgia
like something once seen in a movie
Days bumbling from pot party for lunch
to adolescent sulk over some fresh tease
What did anybody ever see in that early attempt at me?

... 

              To see what else was happening fifty years ago, and a screed on what's happening today read the rest of my poem at http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-knox-2018-july.html. 
                Work by 39 poets in all can be found at http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html
                  And, regardless of my bad-mouthing, Happy Fourth!