(in memory of Captain Robert J. Schweitzer, U.S. Navy pilot,
who served from 1950–1974)

I did something today I haven’t done in years:
I stood, as requested by a speaker at an event,
and recited the pledge of allegiance

(trying to remember which hand crossed
my chest and where my heart is) at an
aircraft museum in the California desert.

I sat in the front row between my sweetheart
and a good friend who’d invited us,
waiting to see if they stood, hesitant to rise.

Like so many of my fellow Americans, part of
me feels that the flag of my country is no
longer mine, given that I and others like me

are considered enemies of the state, as
the current president refers to those of my ilk—
a progressive feminist Democratic poet

retired college journalism professor who
champions free speech and sees no reason
to ever ban a book or insist that women

must carry every fetus, intended or accidental,
into the world. In the end, I rose, too, feeling
the same get-with-it pressure I did as a kid

in sixth grade, compelled to recite the pledge
every morning before any education could
take place. Today the words choked out of me

along with tears for reasons I could not
have articulated in the moment. And later,
my eyes filled after my sweetheart,

himself a veteran, located the photo on the wall
paying tribute to American POWs—the husband
of my mother’s dear friend, a man we hadn’t met

but whose name we wore on metal bracelets,
my sister and I not quite understanding why,
who was released in 1973 after 1,896 days

in the infamous prison in Hanoi. A man who,
once home, lived nine months with his family
before dying behind the wheel of a car.

For him, I thought—and my father drafted and
sent to fight in Korea, along with so many others—
I stood and recited the long-buried words

that they must have said thousands of times
for their country.
And mine.

•••

We were moved to see this tribute to Robert J. Schweitzer
(one of 591 American prisoners of war repatriated in 1973)
on the wall honoring POWs at the Palm Springs Air Museum.

You can learn more about Captain Schweitzer’s career here.