I got to thinking about political resistance – I can’t imagine why! – and two famous photos came to mind: of the flowers being placed in rifles during the October 1967 march on the Pentagon (by photographer Bernie Boston) and of “Tank Man”, that mysterious fellow who simply stood in the middle of the street forcing the Chinese army’s tanks to grind to a halt, this after the conclusion of the protests in Beijing in June of 1989 (by Jeff Widener). And, of course, it has not just been men who have protested across history.
© 2024 Steven E. Cutts
a Studio C recording, December 2024
I wish that I met that young man in the photo slipping flowers down the barrels of the guns
pointed toward him by the soldiers who were standing guard around the Pentagon.
Eye to eye with them, without a single word, he said, “I know this war’s not right.”
That one gesture turned the tables and set gentleness against the nation’s might.
That was courage; that was commitment;
that was taking risks with no sure guarantee.
It took nerves of steel to challenge the injustice.
That was courage!
I with that I could meet that lone man who stood before the tanks
as they lumbered out of Tiananmen Square.
A plain white shirt, two shopping bags, without the slightest military air.
Did he melt into the crowd? Or did authorities detain him
and disappear him so that he’d protest no more.
Remember the ladies: Alice Paul force-fed at Occoquan.
Remember the ladies: Margaret Sanger shouting, “Birth control’s not wrong.”
Remember the ladies: Rachel Corrie, run over in what should be Palestine.
Women too have risen marching, marching, marching time after time.
I wish that I had met Georgia’s congressman John Lewis
with the gospel of nonviolence at his core.
He was beaten ‘til he bled in Rock Hilland in Selma, Alabama,
as if he were at war.
He did not melt into the crowd; he was elected to the government
that had refused him protection years before.