On pledges, flags and abstract ideas

Time to grill the moment we're in

Why I hang a colonial Betsy Ross flag on the Fourth

A neighbor asked “Why do you hang that old Betsy Ross flag with the thirteen stars from your porch? It’s weird.”

“To match the small one hanging by the mailbox on the street.”

“Very funny.”

“They’re reproductions.”

“Seriously, why display them? Is it a Bat Signal? Some Q-Anon thing?

“Kin fought under that flag from ’74 to ’77.”

“1977?”

“1777. About the same year San Xavier was being built. When mom’s great great great great grandpa-”

“I heard he was great.”

“When he was a young man he said yes to a Colonial Army recruiter and left his 10-acre farm in Virginia in the care of his wife and three daughters. He fought alongside General Washington against the redcoats. He was alive when our Constitution was signed and ratified. His farm fell into ruin while he was away. He lost the farm. And like all veterans…”

“Yes?”

“…in his old age he wrote a letter begging Congress to pay him the pension he was owed. They gave him land in Missouri instead. He and his wife are buried there. Died in their nineties.”

“What are you barbecuing today?”

“Red MAGA hats.”

“What?”

“The new Redcoats.”

I Pledge allegiance to the Flag of the thirteen colonies.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the thirteen colonies.
Thirteen dreams of statehood.
One democracy.

I pledge allegiance to the revolutionary’s flawed  Constitution,
And the principles that lay within.
One nation, 
Incorruptible, 
With equal justice under law
For all.

I pledge resistance against Trump’s tyranny,
His fascist theocratic state,
Where rights and freedoms
Are taken off the streets in broad daylight,
And the poor are robbed to feed the rich.

I pledge eternal resistance against this tyranny, 
One King, thieving, lawless and corrupt,
And the mammon he serves,
With injustice for all
Save those who pay tribute.

I pledge allegiance to the People’s  resistance,
One nation,
Under no King.
Indivisible, 
With 
Economic justice,
Social justice,
Healthcare,
Voting rights, 
And liberty for all.

On this Fourth
I pledge allegiance to the flags
Fluttering in the wind on a Manhattan ferry to forsaken Liberty,
Eternally frozen on the Sea of Tranquility,
Lain over our Father’s caskets,
Serenaded at every World Series 

The simple exquisite rare idea those flags represent,
One  rare, fragile, flawed republic,
Home,
To a red, white and blue quilt of many different beautiful peoples of the world
United as One.

I pledge allegiance to my flag
With thirteen stars
And that precious endangered idea for which it stood
At Lexington and Concord,
And Yorktown,
And then 48-stars
At Utah and Omaha Beach,
Then fifty-stars
At the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
And Stonewall,
And still the dream calls to us 
As it called to our revolutionaries
To once again pledge
Our lives,
Our fortunes,
Our posterity to the struggle:
E Pluribus Unum
Out of many
One