April 3, Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the slow haul out of winter, his hand will remember how the wind kisses, finger by finger, the weakening arguments of the cynic.

A mile into woods, they found the missing boy, his tricycle dragging behind him. He ate the sandwich they gave him, shivered. He said he wasn’t cold.

One day a woman could walk this neighborhood of old homes and not look back at every sound the melt or a screeching door will make. There in front of her, the finches, the wet street.

One day the woman will believe in the inviolable. The uncontaminated sun and moon have shone on her all her life. Inviolable history has colored her breath, her appetite. One day the body will accept its own destruction, one aching joint, one ischemic attack at a time, on its way to a perfect marriage with what made it.

Main Street prepares for its parade by sweeping walks and posting sales, by hanging the fluttering banners from one window to the next: Welcome Home. Crazy Days. The sidewalk fills with white shirts, the aroma of sugar.

In the slow haul out of winter, a hand will remember the name and plant it in the ground. In that way the ground enters the man. Through her eye across the blue, these finches. Through the boy’s refusal, the boy. Everywhere the world turns back toward human beings as if, once forgotten, they’d grown new again.

And behind the slow-moving horses, behind the high school band glaring at noon, the gray dissidents are still marching: Save Us.