To the Fourth

It's one of those holidays
that has sort of become
almost as much about
celebrating some event
as whatever we've managed
to represent as celebration,
but it's still a decent time
to remember what that date
meant more than two hundred
thirty years ago, when
a bunch of colonists
gathered to declare themselves
a unified front, not just
a nation, or a land aggrieved.
If it was about any of those
other things, we haven't done
much fighting or celebrating
about them, those were either
self-evident or self-proclaimed.
But we did have a Civil War
over those who no longer
believed in the Fourth of July,
who decided independence was
little more than an excuse
to do whatever they wanted,
as long as they could justify it,
just as once again, in the suits
of politics, where partisans now
claim we don't need two parties,
just the one they support, because
all we have seen for years
is bickering, all those parties
seem to have been interested in.
But on this day, I see things
differently, that these problems
are an affirmation of what was
decided and signed on that day,
and that it's worth celebrating still.