A Casual history

Four hundred years
Like plaque decaying
Spirits unmoved
Brittle bones swaying.
He said, "Shoot the protesters, keep them apart,
Stop it, right now, that shift of the heart."

Tears rage a storm
A flood unrelenting
A ship sailed downriver
Chains unbending.
The screen's cry is distant for memory so loud,
Eyelids unmoistened, no shift of the heart.

Blood on the windshield
History raining
A drive-thru hanging
What else is playing?
"Leave that strange fruit," she said, "not in my park,
Why should I seek a shift of the heart?"

Spiteful as a number
On Bluestone Road
The unseen insists
"Why was I born?"
Inured in white cotton, "Feelings? Don't start!"
Revere the heroes, leave be the hearts.

A caged bird sings
Over an old banjo
Sunday's crossed bridges
Baton the votes.
American pie, sweet, good and tart
A taste so addictive, it addled the heart.

A knee at the game
An anthill unbound
Whose brother? Whose sister?
No up, no down.
Stay with the darkness, know there are stars
Look into the deep for there shifts the heart.

On the "casualness" of racial disparity inspired by Attorney Kim Foxx.