Of Chalkdust, Race, and Rockets

Project Write World: Prompt-Picture of abandoned school room

Of Chalkdust, Race, and Rockets

You mourn the loss of old, and I
cannot understand. The chalk fades
like your memories, white on black,
once crisp and cold, now turned to dust. 
It chokes your lungs.  You squint to see
your generation’s writing on the wall. 
With politics and floods, erosion
of the structure forms. But these young minds
today, so raw and freshly carved, see not the white
on darkened boards nor choose to hear your claim.
Their culture deaf to screeching cries, “This is how
it’s always been, how it must remain.”

You mourn the loss of old, you say?
We've come from slate to blackboard
onto white framed writing walls, adorned
with a palate full of colors, all in Dry Erase. 
Your chalk, a thing of sidewalks now
as children strain to comprehend the boundaries
to which the old still cling.  The edges blurred,
they question me, these minds of spring,
“Why mourn the old decrepit walls,
the chalk, the board, the sterile halls. 
Districts based on melanin, what sense deciding
by the skin when such brightness lies beneath it?”

Why should we mourn the loss of olden days?
Misguided, ancient reasoning disintegrates like chalk,
you see.  This world, the classroom of our young,
will launch them all un-tethered yon, dragging us
behind them.  And we, reluctant travelers,
still clinging to the past will learn that change
is mighty fast these days. There’s little time to mourn.
We are but dust and like the chalk, we soon
will fade away. But our words remain forever
written upon their brains. What will our mark
upon them be, just barriers and chains?  Or will it be
our footsteps that ignite them on their way?

36 Lines








Note about Regional relevance of this poem:

This poem relates to the last fifty years of change in the US, and especially in the East, and is
written as a dialogue from the viewpoint of a generation sitting between two above and possibly
two generations below. Fresh in our parents' memories, the racial segregation of schools prior
to the 1970's, to desegregation and busing in the early seventies, and then to our schools today. 
Each generation becomes more open as we learn to appreciate and respect the varieties of gifts
we bring and cultures we belong to without assumptions being made about what lies behind
the colors of our skin.  We’ve come a long way but we aren't there yet.  Only our children
can lead us forward, hopefully with our guidance, not our rigid grip on the way things used to be.   

SWPoet from
Alabama, USA