SAMARITAN

__________

 

Anyone else

Would've left that Far Right

Reactionary sprawled on the concrete

To bleed out, suffer in his

Paroxysms of serious hurt, receive

Disaster of the steel-toed kind.

 

But not you.

 

The Good Samaritan

Reflex kicked in,

Wouldn't let you

Abandon someone in need of help.

 

Distinctions such as

"Friend" and "foe" didn't matter.

Whom you saw laying at your feet

Wasn't an "enemy".

 

Just an injured man.

 

So you lifted him in your arms,

Slung him over your shoulder

Like a heavy sack of laundry,

Carried him in a firefighter's hold

With a cordon of protection around you,

Your four comrades having your back,

Moving past a raging crowd

And riot-cops

 

With the boisterous sounds 

Of the inner-city battleground 

In both of your ears--

Football songs, national anthem,

Protest chants, flares and smoke grenades--

 

Maybe you thought

 

One dead

White man

Wasn't going to bring back

 

One dead

Black man 

In Minneapolis,

 

One dead

Black woman 

In Louisville,

 

One dead

Black man 

In a Wendy's© parking lot in Atlanta,

 

Martyrs from American

Racial flashpoints--

 

Maybe you thought

 

That injured man's

Life was more worthy of salvation

Than stone monuments to previous wars,

Winston Churchill's statue 

And the Cenotaph.

 

Descriptions such as

"Hero" didn't matter either.

You're just a man protecting

A neck that wasn't your own

 

And you wanted 

Equality, right that minute,

For your children,

For your grandchildren,

For the generations ahead,

For England and troubled America,

If we can get past

Misunderstanding and factions. Brother,

 

I wish I had

Your Good Samaritan

Resolve.

____________

W: 7.13.2020

[ For Patrick Hutchinson. ]

[ Inspired by a photograph by Dylan Martinez from the international news service Reuters. ]

 

[ From the book Rusty Gallows: Passages Against Hate, Vagabond Books, 2022. ]