Poem honors America's 250th birthday

Editor's note: The following was written in honor of America's 250th birthday.

Revival

Held between weeping birch

for one hundred years,

the Kootenai County Courthouse is

determined, like every old building,

to remain, but also tempered

in glacial clay

its bricks like cream

to sooth the sky syruping off a roof

edged in honeyed beige

and sealed in a linen white cornice.

The building’s smooth symmetry

breaks at the modern entrance

where the women who won’t weep

drag on cigarettes waiting for the trial

while men in orange, their hands tied

and men in black, their hair as combed

as their hearts, welcome the people

the only way they know how,

to the courtroom to be decided by their peers.

Each window is an eye bridged

in balance, beneath the feet of the Palladian windows

a Greek fret meanders

to make the third story prominent

and balustered, the balcony a small army of pawns

where no one has stood

to watch the century invent itself.

Julias Zittle, an immigrant,

sketched the building into place

on the hill

where justice is measured

in a country made mostly of newcomers

the birch,

long and roped,

are somehow buoyant.

— Jennifer Passaro

Inaugural Coeur d'Alene Poet Laureate 2024-2027