Future Passage

Years from now
someone will be reading
"The History of the 21st century of America"
and they will underline this passage:
during a time of relentless wars
and widespread poverty which included
inadequate health care, home foreclosures,
and job losses of unparalleled proportion,
America elected its first woman Speaker of the House,
its first African American President
and its first Latina Justice of the Supreme Court.
On the margin of that text
the reader will scribble something like this:
why must we horrify ourselves
into doing the right thing/s
over and over
again?