While the national conventions this month may focus the attention of many Americans on November’s election, my thoughts are already on Inauguration Day. I like to ponder what poets have said on such occasions in the past and to wonder: What would I say?

I can still see Robert Frost standing at the podium in Washington, D.C., in 1961 and struggling to read a newly written poem as glare off the snow blinded him. He soon switched to a poem he knew by heart, about America becoming ours and our becoming Americans. The poem he couldn’t read reveals how moved he was to become the first poet to share his thoughts on Inauguration Day — and how much hope he had for a country that so honored poetry.

After that, Americans witnessed inaugurations of both Democrats and Republicans without poetry until 1993, when Maya Angelou appeared. Since then, three more Americans have written poetry for Inauguration Day. One thing notable about the poems they read: It didn’t matter who became President that day. What does matter, all their poems make clear, is what unites us — our fundamental longings, concerns, and values.

With that in mind, I made my own attempt at an Inauguration Day poem, year unknown, victorious party quite beside the point.

The Decision

The decision is now made but not made —
the decision who will lead but not who will follow.

Who will set aside beliefs long held dear and
dare a new future to come forth and surprise us?

Shall we scatter, as is our wont,
drawing and quartering the nation
as we cry out in anguish —
for we draw and quarter only ourselves —

or shall we gather round,
charting together an unknown path,
testing with each step new ways
to promote the general welfare.

The decision is not made today, nor tomorrow,
nor any day once and for all time,
but every moment
when we insist our way is right
or when we open to possibilities,
setting our hearts on
finding and founding a new world.

Lines by Miller Williams, read at the 1997 inauguration, fit Americans’ concerns in 2020 especially well: “{We} Who were many people coming together/ cannot become one people falling apart.”