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The Prophet’s Dream
It seems as though it’s always dark,
the Promised Land’s in the smoky air,
someone’s crying.
.
Small embers hide
under fallen leaves,
.
yet a Pillar of Fire burns like
God’s voice at midnight—
with the Dream still misunderstood.
.
first published in Domicile under a different title
Fear’s End
.
Shortly after midnight, Martin’s sleep was
broken. Lifting the receiver, bone-tired:
Listen, nigger.*
.
Alone, though his wife
slept beside him, fear drove him
from their bed. The night was filled
with unbearable silence.
.
Struggling, pacing nervously,
moving from hall to kitchen,
.
putting the kettle on the stove
by instinct, walking back and forth,
softly, so as not to wake
the baby, trying to sort
muddled thoughts, to drive away spasms
of godless panic.
.
Hot coffee cools quickly.
.
He sat alone at that kitchen table,
eyes downcast, hands clasped.
.
Grace still amazes.
.
* The well documented “kitchen table incident” occurred during the night following Friday January 27, 1955—near the on-set of the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott—when Martin Luther King Jr. received a threatening phone call from a white man, who called him a “nigger” and warned him that he had better leave Montgomery soon, if he wanted to do so alive.
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