Portside

“If I’ve got a function in life other than being a bloody 
dinosaur, then the job is to say things are complicated. 
They’re always complicated.” 
— Mary Beard
 

A man waits for a bus
beneath a Remember George Floyd mural
half-faded by sun and soot.
He stands on pavement
where marches once passed,
where police horses knocked bodies flat,
where lunging dogs
would have made Bull Connor smile.
Just him on the corner now,
Swallowed by resignation.
Despite quiet dignity
no longer taught in history books.
Knows the difference
between rights on paper and rights in practice.
There’s no march today.
And even though he’s tired,
Tired like Fannie Lou.
Tired like Emmett’s mother
telling the world to look at what they did,
Tired like King on the balcony,
wondering if the country
heard a single damn word.
He’s no threat, no martyr.
Just a man at the crossroads of history,
still wearing the uniform of suspicion,
still fitting the description.
The pole-high cameras
catch everything but context.
Someone with a phone
will frame the moment for the internet,
but not the centuries that led to it.
There are no buses to reconciliation.
No Juneteenth barbecue,
no ballots to cast,
just another anniversary marked by silence.
And when the footage drops,
some one might watch,
mouthing thoughts and prayers,
while the timeline resets.
No one will know his name.
But nothing will ever be the same.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His Conservative Watch columns document the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.