As Pride Slips into Vanity by Ray Succre

Too much of a good thing.
Too many flags everywhere.

Two dozen of them flying in my view just now.
Fourteen across the port walkway, numerous others
on shirts, in windows, on truck bumpers…

The most colossal of flags,
the municipally official one,
waves about in the town square beside the port.
There may be more flags than people out, today.
The dozens of flags in my view just now…
Who is supposed to be convinced?
I know where I live.

What of the other flags that used to fly
atop this boardwalk? There was Japan, Brazil,
England, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Greece,
Russia… because there were more countries
mentioned in my own.

America!

They were taken down for Independence Day two years ago,
those foreign flags, replaced with the stars and bars, all,
and never put back up along the port. It is November,
years later, and the U.S. flag is only.

America!

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