United States of America

My five year old fairy princess grandson leaves a message for me on my bed, "Welcome to the United States of America!" There is a drawing of me with my long gray pony tail and a witches hat. Welcome to the United States of America.

On the way into Denny's among the strawberry fields of Oxnard, California, I am stopped by the headlines of the Los Angeles Times, "Gay Marriage Ban Overturned."
"Wow!" I tell my wife. "We're married in California!"
My niece says, "Congratulations!"
We drink blue margaritas by the pitcher
and ask the mariachis to play "Besame Mucho!"
This is the United States of America.

I am alone in Oakland, walking the trails of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Shoreline. The Canada geese are parading their goslings. A blue heron is preening. There is a cormorant perched on the concrete and steel remains of a lost civilization and a white egret gives me hope that this wetland in the shadows of Oakland International Airport will survive the assault of the two-leggeds.

A man on a bicycle stops. "I'm not going to rob you," he says. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just tell me one thing. One thing that Jesus said to let a man like me go hungry. I won't lie to you. I just got out of Folsom State Prison. I did six years and ten months. Six years and ten months of hard time, and now I'm a free man. I can't make it here in this world with all this noise and all this traffic. I don't know anything about this world. I don't know how I'm going to survive. Plain truth is, I've never begged in my life, but I'm hungry. All I've got are these clothes and this bicycle, and I'm hungry."
All I have is a twenty, a ten, a five, and a full stomach.
This is the United States of America.

I sit on the plane with a man named Steve Star. He is eighty-three years old and has bad breath. The son of a Croation coal miner from the mountains of Utah, he ended up on the Los Angeles City Council and retired to an island in San Francisco Bay. He calls me Rose and asks if I have a family. "No," I lie. This is the United States of America and I am married in only two states.

I come home to the green. St. Francis said, "Speak to me of Love," and the almond tree blossomed. This is the United States of America and the almond is blossoming.