Your Fate America Will Be Mine Poem by Raymond Farrell

Tonight
As I sit
Under the locust tree
In my mind's eye
I stand
Looking out
Over New York Harbor
Toward Liberty Island
There I see
The colossal neoclassical Lady
The robed goddess Libertas
With a torch held high
In her right hand
A Tabula Ansata
Clutched in her left hand
And a broken chain
At her feet
I am a Canadian
My forefathers did not enter
This continent
South of the 49th parallel
But I stand with you
My American brothers and sisters
Shoulder to shoulder
Your pain is my pain
Your hopes are my hopes
Your dreams are my dreams
I remember as a child
Visiting the segregated South
The struggle for Civil Rights
The hope that came
To many when Jim Crow was gone
That hope filled me as well
But now in 2015
I see a divided nation
So many problems
I am rendered dumb
By the overwhelming
And disturbing implications these have
For my children and grandchildren
So many fine words
Written in your Constitution
And Bill of Rights
Years of building and toil
Civil War and struggle
To try and finally
Turn these precepts into reality
And just as it looked possible
It has all been snatched away
By a corrupt political system
A money mad and greedy banking system
An abandonment of values
By the institutions of education and religion
And the entertainment industry
The turning of people's
Hopes and dreams
Into a political football
Handing out welfare to buy votes
Leaving many stuck in squalor
Violence, vice and indifference
Living in urban jungles
On Uncle Sam's plantation
While all across
Your once great land
The middle class
Educated to consume and acquire material things
Have been led by many a Pied Piper
Down the alleys and byways
On the broad way to destruction
My parents never bought on credit
Now the governments and people
Are drowning in a huge sea of debt
Whose depths have yet to be plumbed
The forsaking of Christian values
Has made us callous to the fact
That our wreckless behavior
In the future, will render
Our children and grandchildren
To poverty and the further
If not the complete disintegration
Of social order
If we do not
Squarely face this reality
Nothing can be done
But how are we
To agree on what is to be done
When we no longer
Share a common set of values
Your dilemna America
Is my dilemna
We are on this downhill slide together
And your fate
Will inevitably be mine.