Police and Dog Attack (1993) by James Drake in Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, AL. tt evokes the police response to the Civil Rights Movement marches there in 1963. (Photo by Alexis B 2/1/2020)
I didn’t even want to take a photo of the sculpture
I didn’t
I didn’t want to remember it
I have
I didn’t want to walk through it
I did
walk
Single file, alone
the only way through
I didn’t want to feel it
I did
feel
I didn’t want to talk about it afterward
I didn’t
Until Montgomery
a black woman, my age, asked
You visited Birmingham?
Yes.
Did you see the sculptures? The one …
Yes, I haven’t been able to …
I couldn’t, she said,
walk through it.
Only then words seeped from our hearts
released
Different, yet shared
Released, not freed
Not yet
But met
So much left
to do
to heal
now with some hope
© Tim Kochems (2025)
Hear me read aloud this excerpt from my poem, Oh Empathy, at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LKy2OvuHJmc
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