A collection of nostalgia fills the words, My Country, ‘Tis of Thee. Despite a tune shared with the British anthem, the song resonates, and raises longing eyes to the horizon of our imagination, in memory of a collective past most did not share. Not the land where all our fathers died. Not all descended from prideful pilgrims. Still we have craved the intimation of freedom, a definition of ‘belonging’ expanding to include us as we struggle to fit our picture into the American album. This is Nye’s shared world – not one of rejection but of acceptance, of mamool shortbread, and powdered sweetness dusting open palms.
we believed it would last forever
hold a moment more
the shape of home, of ‘country’
a sapling stretching
in deep-rooted certainty
of endless ripples of rings
