Red Clay Sunrise:
Reflections on a Year in Lead VA

This Yankee come-here,
Virginian by opportunity and choice,
met the mountain singers
and the city music-makers,
met the unvoiced despair
of poor hope in Richmond streets
and in shacks along hillside hollers,
saw the new ships building
in harbors where old
ships once brought crazy hoping
hungry pioneers up
the James River towards
Jefferson’s westward vision,
Declaration of rising sunsets,
met the patriots who
fought their own chains while
forging black hands to harsh fields,
met the new wayfarers
in Reston and Richmond,
building business from
nothing and hard ideas,
remet the American birthplace
of Virginian legacies,
and found this place of
red soil and lost tobacco
still ready for the passion of plows,
new order in a new land
where many hands can
still make Good Work
with our one Common Weal.