Losing the National Debate--A Consolation

One day you learn you’ve lost. Now the country
is a little less like you in it’s character, it’s dream.
Yes, America likes dissent, and that is you, but
it’s getting to where it likes the idea of you more
than the reality of you. America is the church
that’s singing fewer and fewer of the songs you like.
It’s the Superbowl, and your team’s not playing.
It’s your hometown after the factory closed.
It’s the ice cream that doesn’t come in cones, now.
It’s the girlfriend who didn’t know you were steady.

You know your country has a place for you.
It wants you in its yearbook, because it needs
every possible kind it can get. It doesn’t feel
right without you somewhere in town where
it can wave from the car, maybe honk twice.
Without you, we’d be unanimous, and then
we wouldn’t need America after all.
Without you–you know, the general, ideal,
Platonic form of you–there’d be no America at all.