One Today

Stanza 1

It is early morning, and the sun has risen. Using topographic imagery of mountains, lakes, and plains, the speaker invokes great swaths of American territory. This includes the Great Smoky Mountains (abbreviated to “Smokies” [Line 2]), a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains that rises along the Tennessee-North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. Then, he invokes the “Great Lakes” (Line 3); these are Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, which are mostly on or near the Canada-US border, touching on eight states. The “Great Plains” (Line 4) stretch across the central United States and cover in part or all 13 states, and “the Rockies” (Line 4), referring to the Rocky Mountains, the largest mountain range in the country, can be found in the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. The poem’s theme of unity begins in these lines, hinted at by the first line, “One sun rose on us today” (Line 1); the same sun shines on everyone. The last two lines of this stanza home in on the human world as the day begins in the US, indicating that this is to be a poem about the American people.

Stanza 2

In these lines, people all across the US are setting off to work in the morning. The speaker both personalizes this flurry of early-morning activity (“My face, your face” [Line 7]) and expands it (“millions of faces” [Line 7]) to include the whole population, thus emphasizing that the poem is about individuals but also the mass of people and what they have in common. The speaker alludes to a wide variety of occupations. People are driving school buses and delivery trucks while others set up fruit stands in the market. Wait staff head to restaurants, and people who work in accounting make their way to their offices. Teachers head to their schools, and people whose job it is to save lives (doctors and hospital staff are examples) also join the morning rush. Then comes the first detailed personal reference by the speaker, who mentions their “mother” (Line 14) that worked as a cashier in a grocery store for 20 years “so [they] could write this poem” (Line 15). Blanco thus alludes to the typical immigrant story in which the parents—the speaker will mention their father later—work hard so that their children will have the opportunity to succeed and live the “American dream”—the same dream that Blanco will allude to in the next stanza.

Stanza 3

This stanza begins by once more emphasizing unity, “the one light we move through” (Line 16), which alludes not only to the light of the sun but also metaphorically to the light of knowledge, with the images of children at school learning math, history, and science. The phrase “I have a dream” (Line 19) that follows is an allusion to the famous speech by civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in Washington, DC. King gave the speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in the National Mall.

This reference to an inspiring event in American history is immediately followed by the opposite: a dark moment of tragedy. The “sorrow that won’t explain / the empty desks of twenty children marked absent / today, and forever” (Lines 20-22) allude to the mass shooting that occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012. A man shot and killed 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members. When Blanco recited this poem at Obama’s inauguration in January 2013, the memory of this shooting was raw and fresh in people’s minds since the shooting took place just one month before. After alluding to that tragedy, the stanza concludes with positive images of cultural heritage in the US, such as statues and museums.

Stanza 4

The poem now moves from the image of the sun in earlier stanzas to the earth, the ground that we all walk on (“One ground, our ground” [Line 27]). The emphasis is on people who work with their hands. This includes farmworkers, who cultivate the land to produce crops like wheat and corn, as well as coalminers and other workers who dig trenches and lay the pipes and cables that are vital in the creation of communications networks, among other things.

In the last two lines, the speaker returns to the theme first brought up in the second stanza when they mentioned their mother. Now, the speaker refers to their father’s work cutting sugarcane—working with his hands—so that the speaker and his brother “could have books and shoes” (Line 32). This once more emphasizes family life, especially the vital role of parents, who work hard and make sacrifices so that their children can succeed. 

Stanza 5

In addition to the sun and ground in earlier stanzas, the poet now invokes another natural element, wind, and immediately presents it metaphorically as human breath, “our breath” (Line 34). All the sounds of life as the US and its citizens move through their day, from “honking cabs” (Line 35) to the “symphony / of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways” (Lines 37-38), are, imaginatively speaking, part of the breath of humanity in all its variety.

Stanza 6

This stanza continues to emphasize the sounds of life going on in the US—what the people are hearing, whether it is the whistling of a train or people talking quietly in cafés. The reader is twice encouraged to listen to it all by the poet’s use of the imperative “Hear” (Lines 40, 41).

The main theme of the stanza is the variety of languages that people use to greet one another. In English, this might be simply “hello” (Line 42) or “howdy” (Line 43), the latter being a casual greeting that is very common in Texas and many southern and western states. A Jewish person might say “shalom” (Line 42), a Hebrew word that means “peace” and is often used to say “hello,” while an Italian speaker might say “buon giorno” (Line 43), which means “good morning” or “good day.” Some people may say “namaste” (Line 43), an Indian greeting used by Hindus. It literally means “bowing to you” or “bowing to the divine in you.” “[B]uenos días” (Line 43) means “good morning” in Spanish and represents another personal touch on the part of the poet since this was the language that Blanco’s immigrant family spoke when he was a young boy. The variety of languages that people use shows the diversity of the US, but everyone greets each other in an open, friendly manner, which shows unity.

Stanza 7

After the earlier images of sun, ground, and wind, the emphasis now switches to the sky, particularly the Freedom Tower that reaches high into the sky. The tower demonstrates the “resilience” (Line 54) of the US as the country rebounds from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a devastating assault that destroyed the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, and killed nearly 3,000 people. The rebuilt One World Trade Center was at first, during the planning and construction stages, called the Freedom Tower. Construction began in 2006, and when Blanco wrote the poem, it was still under construction. At 1,776 feet in height, the sky “yields” (Line 54) to the tower (now the tallest building in the United States after opening in November 2014) as a symbol of the country’s strength in overcoming tragedy.

Stanza 8

These lines continue the sky theme. The poet points to a variety of moments in which people might glance up at the sky, whether resting a moment from work or offering gratitude, praise, or forgiveness regarding the important people in their lives.

Stanza 9

As the poem concludes, people are heading home after their day’s work. Once more, the emphasis is on unity; the weather may differ from place to place, but the day has passed under “one sky, our sky” (Line 63)—it is common to all of us. The poem has moved from dawn and the light of the sun to nighttime, when everyone can see the moon and the stars. Thus concludes one day in the US in which diverse people set about diverse tasks while an underlying social unity prevailed. The poem ends on a note of hope regarding the future—through the metaphor of exploring new constellations—which waits for everyone in the US to create it together.