Running late, I listened to the Oath in the car while pulled over on a country road. I pulled over because I could not drive and listen. I had to stop and give all of myself to it, to just smiling. I wanted to pound a friend on the back and hoot. What joy!
As soon as I got home, I watched all of it. I had tears in my eyes for Amanda Gorman’s poem, for her poise, for its power, and also for all the memories of powerful smart good kids rolling back, and most of all for the upside down disorientation of feeling hope again as if a long bout of homesickness was lifting from me. I felt the long dread lift from me.
Biden’s speech was wonderful, pitch perfect for this day and on these same steps 14 days after the Trumpist mob tried to destroy democracy. To hear Biden actually speak of white supremacy and systemic racism, to actually say the words directly, to call out the culture of lies left by his predecessor, to place a value on integrity and decency, to hear him speak with such passion and sincerity after four years of insults and cruelty. Too many of the Republicans in power are feral human beings so I expect nothing from them except lies, bile and cynicism, but for the next four years they can destroy nothing. For the next four years black folks have another chance, and the struggling and the poor and wilderness … and birds.
I have not been this happy in four years. I thought I was feeling good once the election was called, but today, today was the goddamn deliverance from evil. For four years I was continually struggling to escape a clinging kind of force, a miasma always always present, but the sunshine and the Oath and the speech and the poet and “Amazing Grace” and the preacher’s blessing were the great balm for my night terrors and perhaps the precious water for our terrible thirst.
