Blanco's inauguration poem, 'One Today'

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Following is the inauguration day poem, "One Today," written and presented by poet Richard Blanco at the U.S. Capitol in Washington:

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peaking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, and charging across the Rockies.

One light waking up rooftops, under each one a story told by our silent gestures moving across windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day.

The pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights.

Fruit stands, apples and oranges arraigned like rainbows, begging our praise.

Silver trucks, heavy with oil or paper, bricks or milk, teeming over highways, alongside us on our way to clean tables, read ledgers or save lives. To teach geometry or ring up groceries, as my mother did for 20 years so I could write this poem for all of us today.

All of us, as vital as the one light we move through. The same light on blackboards with lessons for the day, equations to solve, history to question or atoms imagined.

The "I have a dream" we all keep dreaming, or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain the empty desks of 20 children marked absent today and forever.

Many prayers, but one light, breathing color into stained-glass windows, life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth onto the steps of our museums and park benches, as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground, our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands. Hands bringing coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm. Hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables. Hands as worn as my father's, cutting sugar cane so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains, mingled by one wind, our breath. Breathe. Hear it through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs, buses launching down avenues. The symphony of foot steps, guitars and screeching subways. The unexpected songbird on your clothesline.

Hear squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across cafe tables. Hear the doors we open each day for each other, saying, "Hello," "Shalom," "Buon giorno," "Howdy," "Namaste" or "Buenos dias," in the language my mother taught me and every language, spoken into one wind, carrying our lives without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky. Since the Appalachians and [Sierras] claimed their majesty and the Mississippi and Colorado worked their way to the sea.

Thank the work of our hands, weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report for the boss on time, stitching another wound or uniform. The first brush stroke on a portrait or the last floor on the Freedom Tower jutting into the sky, that yields to our resilience.

One sky toward which we sometimes lift our eyes, tired from work. Some days guessing at the weather of our lives. Some days giving thanks for a love that loves you back. Sometimes praising a mother who knew how to give, or forgiving a father who couldn't give what you wanted.

We head home, through the gloss of rain or weight of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always, always home, always under one sky, our sky.

And always one moon, like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop and every window of one country. All of us facing the stars. Hope, a new constellation, waiting for us to map it. Waiting for us to name it together.