March 7, 1965

I remember mornings when milk came in bottles
left on the front doorstep
when battles on the black-and-white news
couldn’t match our imaginations triggered
by trains rolling down the tracks
headed from somewhere to somewhere
we knew the boxcars by name
listened to the warm steel rails
never had a clue that once the choo choos
carried human cargo
never heard a peep about what happened
that brutal Bloody Sunday March day
I was an oblivious five-year-old
it was the spring of salamanders
the Edmund Pettus bridge
in Selma, Alabama
light-years away
I’d never experienced racial hate
segregation, human degradation
I’m thankful I didn’t get that brand
of education
I didn’t know about Emancipation
how it’s been ignored
by others on the other side of the law
I look around today
1965 doesn’t seem that far away
I’m waking ‘round in skin
and so is everyone else
that doesn’t seem to sink in
with those who claim supremacy
asserting their authority
comes from above.