the way it works is this:
i stop, breathe, take in
workmen digging up streets;
re-routing my path.

i corkscrew through
broken concrete and
tunneled asphalt looking
for a foothold.

--

Okay, I'm buggin'. Here's the poem I'm working on. That other stuff is just chaff.

whites seat from the front, colored from the rear

on a chill night when tens of thousands
exercised the right to shiver, I stood
in a mile-long line with my wife.

friends met us there—not dogs
or hoses, vitriol or spit—as we
honored and cemented

the memory of a woman whose
sitting down spurred uprising.
snaking through streets, parking lots

and the Mall, shuffling and waiting six
hours, sometimes singing spirituals,
parents with children months old

inched toward history. no church
hosts more sacred occasions
than our vigil for Rosa Parks,

trained at Highlander to moot the
sign above the bus driver’s head
written in black and white.

jails lost their power as cells became
crucibles; emboldened ordinary folk
changed from set apart, to set free.