They did not come with halos, those men in the square,
Powdered wigs and parchment clenched in sunburned hands.
They came with debts, and doubts, and dreams
Too loud to be silenced by a distant crown.
They came with musket smoke on their breath
And Enlightenment ink in their veins—
A contradiction wrapped in rebellion.
A tax here. A soldier quartered there.
A law passed by strangers across a salted sea.
Yes, the grievances were real—
But so too was the theater.
Not all bled for liberty; some
Saw the glint of coin beneath its banner.
Some fought to own, not to be free.
Still—
In those July-thick days,
A candle was lit in the dry timber of empire.
It caught the breeze.
It spread,
Not cleanly, not nobly, but furiously.
Some called it providence.
Others called it madness.
And beneath the smoke,
There were mothers who kissed sons they’d never see again,
Black men promised freedom they would not receive,
Tribes watching the trees move with foreign boots.
Even the wind held its breath.
Yet still—
Something happened in the marrow.
Something was spoken
That could not be unsaid.
Not perfectly. Not fully.
But enough to echo.
“We hold…”
That simple start.
What we held then was possibility,
Not perfection.
Not yet.
The ink dried. The cannons cooled.
A country crawled from its cradle,
Not born immaculate but gasping,
Grasping for virtue with dirty hands.
We celebrate not what we were—
But what we said we might become.
Not a flag, but the fabric of striving.
Not the past, but the pressure of promise.
A hope forged in contradiction
And carried,
Still imperfectly,
By each new generation.
So today—
As fireworks mimic the thunder of 1776
And sparklers hiss like whispered arguments
Over the shape of liberty—
Remember:
It was never about idols carved from Founders’ faces.
It was about the flame they lit—
A fire in the throat of July—
Still burning, still dangerous,
Still ours
To tend or to smother.
