Occasional poem
I don't know about you all, but when I was in school and heard about occasional poetry, I first thought it meant poems written by someone who only wrote poetry once in a while. I think I was in college before I found out what it really meant. I think Tennyson's biography is what clued me in.
Today I became an occasional poet.
Forty Years
November 5, 2008
If I could, this would be the day to believe
in the Heaven of my childhood,
learned in a picture-perfect clapboard church
of a New England village,
while other little girls in another church
somewhere else in my country
lost their lives because of their color,
the Heaven where the dead live again,
watching us like neighborhood mothers.
In that Heaven, today would be a celebration,
Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and MLK
jubilant that the promise of this world has been kept,
that all men (and women) are created equal,
knowing at last that they did not die in vain,
while from the steps of the Throne,
Marion Anderson’s angelic voice praises
a sweet land of liberty and justice for all,
while little girls dance for joy.
I may not so sure about the afterlife,
and we haven’t exactly wandered
in the wilderness since nineteen-sixty-eight,
and the promised land sure could do with repairs,
but today I am proud to live in a country
that still breaks down barriers,
and of a man who believes we can all work together
to meet the challenges to come,
because we are one nation, indivisible.
--Katherine Quimby Johnson. All rights reserved