A Black and White Picture

A little girl coming out of a Woolworth store. An eye in my mind begins to clothe its sight with a past image. She has pink ribbons in her hair and a blue dress, maybe she had just come from church. Little black child being tugged quickly through a disapproving, white-skinned crowd. It is not wrong to think of poets as painters. We offer pictures that can be in the now - yet also out of time. Today I pick up an artist's brush, it's not my brush for I can only finger paint with digital ink - yet, I complete an instant of time, make it a portrait, one found only yesterday in an old photograph tucked into a well-worn bible. A bigot could have written this poem, people change with the times, and I? I have just painted what a racist once saw that's all.