E Pluribus Unum is the motto.
From Many, One
It did not describe a melting pot.
There was a bouquet of flowers.
From a magazine: the Gentleman’s Magazine
And the idea was not that we would melt into
an undifferentiated mass.
Instead, we could be united and yet differentiated.
That the rose and daffodil could be in one bouquet,
Yet be separate flowers.
Maybe like a salad bowl, where the tinge of radicchio is distinct From the mellow mushroom, yet it is inarguably one salad.
We spent this year trying to become ONE.
As it is written: “Therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his
wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
So we thought we could cleave, become one flesh —
But, maybe, those whose choice it was
Could not leave the father or the mother.
Or maybe, just not yet.
One day: “Behold, how good and how pleasant
it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.”
by Jim Prevor