In Honor of Ruby Bridges, Who Walked a Gauntlet and Turned it Into a Bridge

She did not click her ruby heels
and walk across that bridge of rainbow
home to Kansas. No, this one had the ruby
in her heart, and set her black patent leathers
schoolward, with federal marshals
at her corners, like framing a house.

She made a bridge, this one.
She might have quaked–
who wouldn’t, with the vitriol
of a nation tossed her way
like the tomatoes on the wall
in the Rockwell version?–but
she walked her pathway daily,
built that bridge with daily walking.

Gratitude List:
1.  Ruby Bridges
2.  Martin Luther King, Jr.
3.  Rosa Parks
4.  All those who fought and marches and sang and endured to bring about civil rights in our country.
5.  People still doing the work to confront and transform racist thinking in self, community, nation

May we walk in Beauty.