I don’t usually post poems on this blog, except for poems
serving as prompts for the monthly challenge. I’ve decided to make an exception
today, on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. I surely would
have been in D.C. to participate, except for the fact that it was three days
before my wedding (yes, that means my husband and I will celebrate our 50th
anniversary this week, on August 31).
Last Saturday I was in Chicago for a meeting of Poets &
Patrons of Chicago. Maybe it was because I’d been hearing radio and TV accounts
of preparation for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the
March on Washington. Maybe it was because I was again thinking about the fact
that I regretted that I couldn’t go to Washington for the March and be ready
for my wedding three days later. At any rate I noticed something that warmed my
heart. I suspect I may have seen the same “picture” on other occasions when I
walked through Union Station, and didn’t even notice. But this time, I was
touched, and wrote this poem on the train on my way back to the suburbs.
Fifty Years After
Fifty years after
the March on Washington,
fifty years after
Martin Luther King
stood in front
of the Lincoln Memorial,
painting a dream
of equality
on this late August day,
Dr. King walks with me
in Union Station, Chicago.
I say, Stop! Turn
around,
Dr. King. See the
picture
behind you—
The shoeshine stand.
Dr. King glances back.
He turns, smiling.
I dreamed of this, too,
he whispers.
The day when sometimes
a white man would
polish
a black man’s shoes
and neither
would be called “boy.”
~ Wilda Morris
©
August 2013
