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.