One Today

The theme of unity amid diversity pervades the poem. This unity is established by multiple repetition of images of single (“one”) natural objects or phenomena, several times linked to the word “our.” This creates a link to the human world, strongly suggesting that the people of the US are also one singular unit. Examples include “One sun” (Line 1), “One light” (Line 5), “One ground. Our ground” (Line 27), “one wind—our breath” (Line 35), “One sky” (Line 47), “one sky, our sky” (Line 63), and “one moon” (Line 63). Some of this imagery of unity also contains images of diversity, as in “one light / breathing color into stained glass windows” (Lines 22-23) and “one moon / like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop / and every window of one country” (Lines 63-65).

These evocations of unity and oneness are often followed by a description, a kind of Whitmanesque list, of diverse things that feature prominently in American life as people go about their daily business. “One ground. Our ground” (Line 27), for example, is followed by a description of many different kinds of jobs where people work with their hands. After the “one wind” is metaphorically identified with “our breath” (Line 35), the speaker invites the reader to hear this breath in all the diverse sounds of the US.