We Are the People

This is where the sandy waves break against the ragged wooden fences with savage force, hurricanes of thrust threatening to tear the old structures down as the gray sky with its overcast blanket stretches from the beach over the docks and the boardwalks and the roads and the shops and the bars and the ice cream parlors, keeps on going over the tops of the old hotel buildings and the power lines and the rooftop puddles, until night falls and the lights light up the sky and the cars roll by and the sound vibrates the air that is filled with sea spray and the waves slow down and the water is still and the orbs of light reflect against the deep blue water with a glittering twinkle. This is where the apartment buildings have whitewashed walls and the sinks are full of soapy gray water and sharp knives that are used to cut the plums and mangoes and kiwis and raspberries that compose the everyday diet of these native peoples who are neither white nor black, nor crystal, nor brown, nor red, nor yellow, nor green, but something that transcends the everyday colors and our English that is used to define them, something much richer and deeper and more whole than anything that can be defined by a single word. These are the people, our people, the same people who light a fire in the middle of the desert at night in order to stay warm, the same people who eat caviar and drink two hundred year old champagne, the same people who do base jumps off skyscrapers and the same people who text while they walk down the sidewalk and the same people whose families have worked in the mine for generations and the same people who play guitar because it makes them feel better and the same people who haven’t had food in three days and the same people who work at the counter behind the bank and the same people who have two dogs and a comfy carpet and the same people who only feel at home when they’re in the third pew with the incense and the holy water still fresh on their foreheads and the same people who read the newspaper with their coffee and the same people who are still fighting the war forty years later and the same people who sew clothes for their grandchildren and water their gardens and the same people who love their mothers and the same people who hear gunshots next door and the same people who are always making a brand new start and the same people who are never able to make a brand new start and the same people who just want the world to let them live. This is what is meant by “we the people” and it is not defined by the boundaries of any country or reduced by any political borders, but transcends all of these transient fabrications and encompasses all of our people, because we are all of these people, we all drank milk as children and we all have warm life-giving blood flowing through our veins. We are the same people, the same person, and God will set the wind at our backs and bring us into the promised land if we work together as one.