by J. Patrick Lewis
The sound rumbling out
of the microphone is foreign
somehow: words punching
like a heavyweight then
pirouetting like a ballerina.
Someone coughs, someone
sighs. It is all they can do,
all anyone can do.
As if he's instructing birds,
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
watches his words flutter up
and drop a blessing of hallelujah-
amen grace notes across the nation.
When he says he has a dream,
I have one too, my dream
blinking on and off like neon
in windows on Georgia Avenue.
My tightrope-wire nerves jolt
and jangle, ripple and trip, and
I know that I will no longer look
back at who it was I was, but
keep my eyes fixed ahead
on who I am becoming.
from Voices from the March on Washington Poems by J. Patrick Lewis and George Ella Lyon, 2014, WordSong
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