BEING AMERICAN

Great Grandmother, everybody said, was a Cherokee Indian,

and I believe it because one look at some of the people in my family

will tell you that we aren’t descended from anything pure and easy.

The Cherokee lady was married to a cowboy who spent some time with her

but most of his time herding cows across the plains of Texas and Oklahoma.

The other recent names on that side of the family are Dutch and English.

My Mother’s father looked as if he belonged in a Rembrandt painting.

On the other side of the family the names are French and English,

but the language those folks spoke was pure American hillbilly

straight out of Arkansas where people take pleasure in being Southern.

We are the mongrel American family, the one that includes everybody,

that came from everywhere and will go and be whatever is needed

to keep this country the place that belongs to nobody in particular

and to everybody who has the good fortune to be born or taken

without hesitation under the wings of the Great American Eagle.