This poem just written by Phil Wood, also in Denver, is based on a true story.
A LITTLE BIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY
I met her father once.
He'd come up from Birmingham
after the church bombing
to be a Dean at DU.
He drove out to Commerce City--
the suburb next to the stinky
oil refineries
where half the fathers
were long haul truckers
& gone most of the time
to talk to my class
about the Civil Rights Movement.
His face was full of lines
aged in from a lifetime of wariness.
He slept with one eye open.
Growing up black in the Deep South
will do that.
He said something like:
“Yes, we loved Martin;
we followed him,
but most of us
kept shot guns
under our beds.
You don't let people
shoot up your house
without a fight.”
Non-violence, yes, but
practical too.
His daughter
told The New Yorker
she owed the Movement
nothing.
All her success
was entirely
her own doing.
(I liked her father better.)
Now Condi
gets $150,000
to tell college students
what the Civil Rights
Movement was all about.
She doesn't get
put on trial
like Goehring
before his suicide
& her pal,
the football fan,
he's exhibiting his paintings< br >instead of wearing
an orange jump suit
for unspeakable crimes.
Such is life
in the last days
of the Republic
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