July 6, 2018
Friday
We enjoy
the spaciousness
Of our King suite
A wall sized window
The lack of deadlines and alarms
And each other
Eventually
We extricate ourselves
From our hotel paradise
To explore The Mall
That holds the hopes
And dreams of protesters
And inaugural attendees
We find a panel of disparate musicians,
Roma and Baul
Whose purity of spirit and song
Entrance us
I step out of my zone of comfort
Moving forward to pose a question
About the women in their cultures
And delight in the Sufi’s answer
About each of us containing
Both male and female
And about music being
An attempt to reach
The Divine
In ourselves
The Catalonian betrays a similarity
That we, in our world, struggle against:
Women only as singers and dancers.
We spot our New Museum
But can’t get in
So we sit by its fountain
Resting and longing for entry
Even the gift shop causes
Pangs of the heart
We shall try again tomorrow
(We do, and it is for naught)
There is, however, more value
In the day
For our pilgrimage requires that
We pay homage to our King
Cab driver, accented black man,
Says he knows the way
But does not
Dropping us, instead,
To the memorial for FDR
At which, despite our disappointment,
We are inspired by his words
His four terms
And, of course,
His Eleanor.
A father and his daughter,
Who we’ve met before
(and will again)
Point us in the right direction.
We delight in the massiveness and
Beauty of the statue of
Martin
He emerges from a mountain
And gazes across the water
To Lincoln?
To the world he envisions
For us?
Will the children brought here
Remember to pursue his
Dream?