I pledge allegiance.
To the pinyon jays at the feeders and the coyotes that woke me up at dawn, yipping at the moon. To the local ravens, jackrabbits and pronghorn antelope. Even to the black Angus cattle in my neighborhood, slow and stupid though they are.
I pledge allegiance to the land, all of it: forests, meadows, deserts and bogs. Especially to public land – the commons. To village parks and to Central Park; to the Appalachians and the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada and the dark side of the moon. To everywhere that people call “nowhere”. May it always be so.
I pledge allegiance to mountains crumbling into plains, to pots of dirt becoming tomatoes. To wheat fields in South Dakota, corn fields in Iowa and orchards in Oregon. To a billion tons of topsoil that blew away in the Dust Bowl; to the abused American farmland that is, right this minute, washing down the Mississippi River.
I pledge allegiance to all water. To lakes, ponds and rivers, even the ones we’ve poisoned – especially the ones we’ve poisoned. To oceans filling with plastic and emptying of whales; to melting icebergs and their desperate polar bears. To the half-full glass on my kitchen table.
I pledge allegiance to fire – to wood stoves warming cabins, to candles lighting windows. To the roaring sun that grows the garden, paints the sky, and makes my solar panels do their magic.
I pledge allegiance to air – to winds that turn the giant turbines that power out 21st-century lives. To breezes that stir these hot summer afternoons. To this breath, and the next breath, and the next …
I pledge allegiance to family and friends, including the ones I haven’t met yet, and to the doctors and nurses who care for the people that I care about. I pledge allegiance to high-tech medicine. To witch-doctoring and faith healing. To any healing. To all healing.
I pledge allegiance to my neighbors, though I might wish that some of them lived somewhere else. They don’t, so we have to live with each other. Which is better than living against each other.
I pledge allegiance to music. To Satchmo and Duke and Lady Day; to Hank and Woody and Bob and Janis. To Little Walter and Big Mama Thornton. To Bach and Beethoven and Mozart. To second-graders on their flute-a-phones. To the very idea of music.
I pledge allegiance to the written word. To Shakespeare and Whitman and every first-grader scrawling her name in crayon for the first time. To the writers whose honest words challenge a king or enrage a dictator, whose shining paragraphs land them in dark prisons, or shallow graves.
I also pledge allegiance – now and forever – to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To self-evident truths. To government of, for, and by the people. To respect for the sovereignty of all nations.
I pledge allegiance to the rule of law. To due process and habeas corpus, and to judges whose own allegiance is to the law and to justice, not to ideologies or billionaire benefactors.
I pledge allegiance to free speech, a free press, and freedom of religion. I pledge allegiance to freedom from religion. To human rights for everybody, even the people I don’t like – the ones I judge, the ones I fear.
I pledge allegiance to facts, and to the scientific method. I pledge allegiance to history, because without it we are corks bobbing in an ocean of meaningless, horrifying events.
I pledge allegiance to the gassed and the lynched and the slaughtered. I pledge allegiance to those who say, Never Again. I pledge allegiance to Common Cause, to Amnesty International, to Doctors Without Borders.
I pledge allegiance to a hundred million displaced people around the world, each of whom knows more about loss than I ever hope to learn. To the uncounted homeless, the dispossessed, the used-up and thrown away and forgotten.
I pledge allegiance to mothers walking north in the desert, who flee gangs and despots and crooked politicians. I pledge allegiance to their children, and their children’s children…
And of course I pledge allegiance to the United States of America. But my loyalty is to ideals, my patriotism tempered by lessons from the past. My love of country is strong, not blind.
Michael Wolcott’s email address is michaeljwolcott@gmail.com
