{"id":439,"date":"2022-07-04T17:48:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T17:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/?p=439"},"modified":"2022-07-04T17:51:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T17:51:47","slug":"439-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/439-2\/","title":{"rendered":"An Alternative to the Usual July 4 events, from poet John Daniel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/a>Dependence Day<\/a> By John Daniel<\/th><\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/th><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks
or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag,
a day of staying home instead of crowding away,
a day we celebrate nothing gained in war
but what we’re given\u2014how the sun’s warmth
is democratic, touching everyone,
and the rain is democratic too,
how the strongest branches in the wind
give themselves as they resist, resist
and give themselves, how birds could have no freedom
without the planet’s weight to wing against,
how Earth itself could come to be
only when a whirling cloud of dust
pledged allegiance as a world
circling dependently around a star, and the star
blossomed into fire from the ash of other stars,
and once, at the dark zero of our time,
a blaze of revolutionary light
exploded out of nowhere, out of nothing,
because nothing needed the light,
as the brilliance of the light itself needs nothing.<\/th><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[thanks to the Poetry Foundation]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dependence Day By John Daniel It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworksor loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag,a day of staying home instead of crowding away,a day we celebrate nothing gained in warbut what we’re given\u2014how the sun’s warmthis democratic, touching everyone,and the rain is democratic too,how the strongest branches in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Alternative to the Usual July 4 events, from poet John Daniel - John Shirley Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/john-shirley.com\/blog\/439-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Alternative to the Usual July 4 events, from poet John Daniel - 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