I am sure I would have loved to share in the memories of August 25, 1963 if I had gone to Washington D.C. this past Saturday (the 24th of August 2013). I admit to an hard-edged cynicism that colors almost all of what I do and believe in living my life honestly. With this precoursing thought I give you the following poem written after seeing the news coverage of Washington's event and after riding the bus two days that weekend in Baltimore where I have lived all of my life. I wish this was not such an everyday banality but in this city that I love it is said and done quite often with a much harder and angrier attitude than even my cynicism can engender.

My poem of course pales next to a master of language and life such as Countee Cullen :

Modern Incident In Baltimore, August 25, 2013"

I ride the bus in Baltimore

On this august weekend of remembrance

For the man who died from hate

And all I hear are words

That I was raised to never use

As people of darker skins than me

Curse one another for being

The people of the color that they are.

With sincere apologies to Countee Cullen,

-t.j.ward, August 25, 2013 fifty years later

Incident

               

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a Baltimorean

Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

That's all that I remember.                        

- Countee Cullen

As always, thank you for reading..., Tim Ward