Forty Years

            November 5, 2008

If I could, this would be the day to believe

            in the Heaven of my childhood,

learned in a picture-perfect clapboard church

            of a New England village,

while other little girls in another church

            somewhere else in my country

lost their lives because of their color,

the Heaven where the dead live again,

watching us like neighborhood mothers.

In that Heaven, today would be a celebration,

            Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and MLK

jubilant that the promise of this world has been kept,

            that all men (and women) are created equal,

knowing at last that they did not die in vain,

            while from the steps of the Throne,

Marion Anderson’s angelic voice praises

            a sweet land of liberty and justice for all,

while little girls dance for joy.

I may not so sure about the afterlife,

            and we haven’t exactly wandered

in the wilderness since nineteen-sixty-eight,

            and the promised land sure could do with repairs,

but today I am proud to live in a country

            that still breaks down barriers,
and of a man who believes we can all work together

            to meet the challenges to come,

because we are one nation, indivisible.

                      --Katherine Quimby Johnson. All rights reserved