Isolation
Lonely is a boat
in the Mojave Desert
waiting for a flood.
Unless there is a Second Coming of Noah,
dreams are the only oasis of hope.
Natalie never experienced loneliness
until she stepped off the bus
in Jackson Mississippi in 1971.
A child of many
learning to color outside the lines of racism
and draw her own conclusions.
Thrust in to the limelight of an adult world
filled with discrimination and segregation.
Words she had never known until teachers
explained why traveling across town every day
would make the world a better place.
They didn’t explain that her world
would be displaced.
They didn’t explain to young Natalie
that Brown vs the Board of Education
in Topeka gave her the inherent right
to learn that separate but equal
was a complicated color coated math game
of pluses and minuses that weren’t always equal
but ended with a negative result in ignorance.
Nothing could prepare Natalie for the hatred
exploding in to her young mind
her first morning as she ran the gauntlet
from the bus to the door of a school
that was supposed to be a haven
to nurture and develop thought.
They taught Natalie her first class in humiliation
as she was stripped, hosed down, and deloused
with perfect strangers in a gymnasium
and put on display for half a day
instead of being able to play as child of innocence.
Witness to a malicious reprise delivered in pertinence.
Natalie experienced her first exercises in futility
as lessons assigned to her for two weeks,
to complete with no textbooks,
would fuel pernicious rumors whispered
in the “hall of idiots” that ride the bus,
“You can trust these kids can’t be taught.”
Natalie would come to understand
the true meaning of retribution
walking in the shadows of signs and reminders
that society still can wear blinders
with-in four walls when designating
fountains, tables and bathrooms
for the color of her skin.
Isolation of masses in classes
at schools designated for desegregation
but practiced in the art of degradation.
Natalie would become a child of apathy
building a boat named Solitude
in the middle of the Mississippi desert
baking in the scorching sun of indifference
dreaming of the day
praying for the day
skies would open
and carry her away in a flood of hope
to an oasis of freedom and childhood lost
at the cost of innocence.
MY SISTER NATALIE……
a child of many
learned to color outside the lines of racism
and draw her own conclusions.
She blossomed
in an adult world still filled
with discrimination and segregation,
in to a color blind soul
with a forgiving heart so bold
it pumps rivers of hope for others
in to the future.
|
