Midway

I was born in the south in the year 1974,
six years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr,
ten years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
twenty years after Brown vs Board of Education

Growing up I remember witnessing the African-American marchers
through green-forested Forsyth County, GA
So many years a hostile and dangerous place for them from the lynchings of 1912
Greeted with epithets in the town of Cumming,
a gathering of white supremacists
from throughout the north of Georgia
spewing stones and hatred
across blighted generations

The same place where the Olympic torch passed in 1984,
carried in flame by a man of color
The place where my father was a grocer
with patrons oft in the infancy
of their own rung of enlightenment
Just a few miles from where I grew up
in a town across the county line,
still with remnants of segregation,
in transition to the throes of suburbia

Internalizing my personal sense of justice
through these visions, or TV shows,
the encyclopedia,
or the Fulton County schools teaching on the era of civil rights,
bussing in my best friend in fifth grade
Or the highlight of Hank Aaron circling the bases at his 715th
in the city of Resurgens
defined by its movement away from the old south,
yet shadowed by the darkness carved on Stone Mountain

It hasn't been so long
in smoky blaring rooms and punk bands
Scenes corrupted by manchildren
with shaved heads and white laces on their boots,
commanding attention and disdain,
threatening in their presence,
pushing you and your friends from behind
Their names and faces showing up in journals
of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Just a small slice of my humble young life

Entrenchment doesn't turn on a dime

Remediation doesn't take with turning away

Lifetimes are spent shedding time and trauma

The work is never done.

Matt Mauldin
8/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Appears in Patterns of Reconciliation