Dear President-Elect Trump:
My daughter, Danielle, wrote a poem in 2010 when she was 17 years old. As I have read the news that details so clearly the troubles in America–most of them caused by adults–this poem comes to mind. I give it to you today because it embodies the need that America’s youth have in an America more united, more compassionate, and more hopeful than now.
Here’s to America’s youth!
E Pluribus Unum
By: Danielle Leavitt (age 17)
I don’t know when I met you,
America.
It wasn’t on some Fourth of July that squealed and smoked in the front yard,
Not when I learned the Rap of the Map so I could fumble out every state and capital.
Not in first grade when Mrs. Boswell said we should all love
America.
Not America with some pop-in-the-microwave-for-only-one-minute-pizza-licious experience.
Not the bling-bling of a Hollywood lifestyle, or the four-door sedan with leather seats.
Not the green plastic grass of a golf course.
America, you are not Star Wars, not Michael Jackson, not Madonna.
Your promise is not drowned in the unemployment rate, the mortgage bailout, or the
collapsing social security system.
Your promise does not lie in the results of March Madness or the sky-rocketing numbers
on the gasoline board.
America, you are more than that.
America drove with my mom across the country to college in a 1979 green Subaru.
America walked to the convenience station to go to the bathroom next to my penniless
grandparents.
America found food in the dumpster.
America, you sobbed on the jail cell stairs during “Silent Night,”
handed me my change at Albertsons, and made a Christmas tree out of paper cups.
America was the Chinese girl, the Turkish boy, the Columbian girl, and the German girl in my U.S.
history class.
America is the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the homeless man
on University Avenue, Dennis, who smokes and reads the Daily Herald.
America stacks cinderblocks for someone else’s retaining wall and sends the money home
to the woman in Mexico.
America, you don’t cry and split because someone said they don’t agree with your same-sex
marriage stance.
You are West coast-East coast, burgers-tofu, conservative-liberal, futbal-football.
You praise in ten thousand thousand church choirs,
hum with my fly-fishing uncle,
and sing-a-long with the blue-collar truck driver.
Not what but who
not they but we
not he or she or me or you, but
US.
E Pluribus Unum.
I don’t know when I met you,
America,
but I know you when I see you.
Sincerely,
David O. Leavitt
