Entrekin

Or Changefest ’08, as The Daily Show apparently took to calling it:

I’ve read enough reactions on blogs and Twitter that I suspect that having been singularly unimpressed by today’s inaugural poem is not an uncommon reaction. I’m sure Elizabeth Alexander is an otherwise fine writer, and I’m sure the great crowd and the singular historicity of today’s event affected everyone, but whether it was in the delivery or the content, I’ve sensed many people feeling decidedly meh about the poem.

A Twitter friend tweeted that everyone criticizing should try and do better, and then specifically challenged me to write and share when I said I wish I’d been invited, and I thought, you know what?

Gauntlet accepted. Bear in mind, I’ve had a few hours, and would revise, but here’s a start:

“Just One Smile”

It’s his smile.
Of few other presidents or men
Do we remember a smile–
Kennedy’s hair and Nixon’s sweaty brow,
Roosevelt’s bear and hat
(Teddy and Frank, respectively)–
But today we have a smile,
a bright bream
wide as the day is long,
true as words on a page,
genuine as the bills in our pockets
and worth every bit as much as that currency.
If we could fold our lips into our wallets,
exchange them, one man to another,
ours today could be a rich country.
We would worry less about tax cuts and the Dow,
less about how we might pay for our children’s health,
because we would know our smiles can heal.
Our smiles can help.

Just one smile,
sure-placed and sincerely bestowed,
offered without restraint, without caveat,
offered, most important, with warm certainty
of its own return,
can change the world.

Just one smile can turn a global tide
and change a single person’s mood.
Just one smile can be the change
we want to see in the world
and offer to all who receive it
the courage to invest in the audacity of hope.

The power of just one smile
is that it does not belong to one man,
charged on this day to accept the great burden
of leadership and generations–
(bring us your tired, your weak, your poor in spirit).

The power of that one smile is that it inspires mine.
And yours.
And yours and yours.
And yours and yours and yours.

Just one smile inspires all of us
to believe again.
Not in a flag or a country or a world,
but in our own ability to change it,
and to shape it.
To believe again in a dream
of a world in which our character might be our capital
and smiles our currency.

Today, we smile.
Some through emotional tears,
many in ecstatic joy,
all in relief and celebration.

Today, we realize that the answer is not solely
“Yes, we can,”
or “have,”
or “did,”
or “will,”
but all those responses punctuated by our certain smiles.

Just one smile
provides relief.

Just one smile
proves we can overcome.

Just one smile
turns the other cheek
to years of heartbreak and struggle,
bullets and tears.

Just one smile
can make a difference.

And so, in these tough times
of darkness and despair,
when it seems impossible
to reach out to your neighbor
to offer your help
to make a difference,
remember that just one smile
can.
And does.
And will.

The more we continue to refer to Barack Obama as our nation’s “first black president,” the more we continue to guarantee the frustration of Martin Luther King’s dream that we as human beings be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.

Barack Obama is, so far, nothing more nor less than our nation’s 44th president. Whatever achievements he accomplishes in that position will be accomplished because of his strength as a human being, not the color of the skin of one of his parents.

Obama takes power, urges unity vs. ‘raging storms’ – Yahoo! News.

(Edit to add: I really must credit my former student, Peche Toney, for beginning the inspiration for this thought days ago, I’ve realized. She posted the sort of note that made me proud to have once been her teacher, and I obviously thought it was extraordinarily cogent. It was only reading that Yahoo! news article that began to solidify the same sentiment in me.)