"to whit"

poor America,
its iconic landscape skin-damaged, scaly, it leans sideways
on its wobbly legs and collapses, heaving,
a sigh of greenhouse gasses,
huddled masses,
on its own, and in its own
way trying to prove an argument
to a world long past that--
one that has seen the beast
and now observes the wooly tufts
of its shedded fur, democracy,
as it settles across the polished globe.