My 9-year-old granddaughter and I were on our way to the Science Museum of Minnesota today. I was driving, and she was sitting in the passenger seat. We slowly passed a car - the rest below the fold.
DRIVING ON HIGHWAY 5 TODAY
To the man in the SUV on Highway 5 this morning,
driving the big car with the anti-Obama bumper stickers on the back
and the racist depiction of the President
we saw on the driver's window as we pulled past you -
the man who, seeing the stickers on my bumper,
pulled back up beside me
and held up a handwritten sign,
COMMIE or STUPID?
in my 9-year-old granddaughter's face,
thereby teaching her something ugly about the world
and the people in it:
Tonight she and I sat and read poems
from a Palestinian poet,
poems that speak of how beautiful the world is,
and how beautiful the people in it,
and I had the thought that
even you must sometimes be beautiful,
but not today.
© 2010 Jeff Whitmill