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The bridge Spans the Alabama, six blocks out of Selma
an early morning mist still coats the road
the only sound the breeze dancing in the bridge supports
Then forty years just fall away as my memory plays
and my shoulders hold once more the heavy load
I can hear the dogs barking and feel the tear gas sting
My eyes, blood blinded from the truncheon wound.
heart beats with the same terror of that day
a bullwhip’s crack echoes loud upon the flood.
Screams of fear and hatred fill my ears and mind
and the self same panic bile rises bitter on my tongue
ground trembles with the hoofbeats of the mounted troopers
again I’m stumbling, falling, trampled beneath the running feet
for a moment I am gripped by
that same, suffocating,
terrible,
darkness.
Then the darkness melts into a smile, warming as a noonday sun
a gentle but urgent voice urges, we have to go, we have to go
It’s only then I notice the broken, Cellotaped, glasses
Her name was Martha she was a marcher and a nurse
In so many way that day change my…our world
two weeks later we crossed Edmund Pettus Bridge. Hand in hand.
Hand squeezing mine pulls me back across forty years
that self same smile, now framed in silvered hair fills my vision
a hand softly touches my forehead scar, a voice urges
Jacob, it looks like rain, we have to go, we have to go.
In forty years we’re crossed so many Edmund Pettus bridges.
It ain’t over, It won’t be until the day
any child, mine or yours, is able to cross any bridge they want to.
Note:
On March 7,1965. Civil rights marchers, including Dr Martin Luther King jr. set out to march from Selma to Montgomery some 50 miles away to bring attention to the injustice of a segregated south.
They only made it six blocks. At the Edmund Pettis Bridge, the marchers were met by state and local lawmen wielding clubs and tear gas, who drove them back to Selma.
Bill Mitton
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Comments about this poem (EDMUND PETTUS BRIDGE
by
Bill Mitton
) |
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comments about this poem (EDMUND PETTUS BRIDGE by
Bill Mitton
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Rich Hanson
(1/6/2006 8:23:00 PM) |
Extremely well woven mix of history with your own life. Just to add a note of significance regarding the bridge. You've probably heard that it was named in honor of a Confederate Brigadier General.
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Max Reif
(1/6/2006 6:50:00 PM) |
Well, this gave me chills,
(of warmth, toward the end) ,
I don't think a poem's ever done that to me.
Enough said.
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Barbara Young
(1/6/2006 5:21:00 PM) |
I found Mr. Mitton's poem moving, full of the horror of the day.
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