“Nationhood”

Is it the land or her people
that make a nation stand?
Are walls and borders
erected indomitable?

I cannot think it so.

Rippling ridges weathered and worn
and sheer peaks of ice and stone-
they bear our strength
when the storms arrive.

Great rivers that snake
and Leviathan lakes tumbling
down hills and plains-
they wash our hands clean.

Forests and deserts ancient and still-
mementos to the serenity
of the thousand gods or
sense of self we seek.

When all people who would
call home that land
look on each other as one,
then the Nation is born.

At times that is obscured
by the fog, dispersed
only by the collective breath.

Steve D