Sunday, July 15, 2012

Separate, Not Necessarily Equal



They sat upstairs at the movies,
we sat down.
They sat at the back of the bus,
we at the front.
At the A&P they had their water coolers,
we had ours; side by side they were
clearly marked White and Colored.
They had their bathrooms,
we had ours.
They had their schools and
we had ours.
They-we-they-we-they-we
separate not necessarily equal
bur certainly divided.
You didn’t ask why;
it just was, until
someone heard
the weeping from heaven.

This is another in a series of poem about growing up in the South, suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback at A Little Somethin’.

Photograph: Trolley, New Orleans, circa 1955 by Robert Frank.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

so many people
divided
by the cruelty
of human greed
how it was
how it is
oh
how it continues
in every heart
i me we

Megan Willome said...

Quite the ending!

Martha Jane Orlando said...

One of your best, Glynn! I, too, loved the ending.
Blessings!

S. Etole said...

yes ... great ending for a great poem.

David Rupert said...

I grew up in the West...so far away from any of this.

But Mother grew up in Florida. And some of the things she would say ... oh my. But they were just ingrained in her...