poem for Obama and for us

“Come with me,” he says, “to the edge of this bridge. We will all hold hands and jump off.”

“Come with me,” to the queers with the lip rings and the slippery breasts.

“Come with me,” to the brown man in the wheel chair who fired guns in Vietnam.

“Come with me,” he says, as if an angel or a doctor sent him, “We will stand out in the rain together, learn a lesson about humility.” We wear jeans and black t-shirts even though some of us have much warmer clothing but we want to understand each other so we dress alike.

“Come with me,” to the high school dropouts who recently lost their jobs when they were caught stealing milk from the local Wal-Marts.

“Let us drink from the river and eat ears of corn, extra butter, extra salt,” as if we’ve never eaten anything else together, because we haven’t.

We step steady onto this shaky rainbow as an unlikely group and hope we wind up in a pot of sanity but no one can be sure because we’ve never followed anyone before, much less all as one. We stare at each other, watch the bizarre ways we dance or don’t, wonder how the other learned to move like that or stand so tidy still in spite of the fire energy pervading the crowd.

“Come with me,” he said when all I wanted was to stay stuck in my easy-chair and watch television, but he started to cry, so I cried too. I missed my grandmother but “Lucky you,” he said to me, I could bring her along if I like, so I do.

“She will be difficult to support,” I say, “She is white and not well.”

He smiles and summons four young imperfect strangers to accompany us. Eighty-four years old and Gramma walks or we take turns lifting her. She closes her eyes and makes new memories about this man, these men, this surprising and somehow surreal experience.

“Come with me,” he says, and we scoop people along the way who don’t know or can’t imagine they can move this fast or this far without the comfort of leather shoes and familiar faces.

“Come with me,” he says, and we do.