to Rosa Parks—a spirit, at liberty, at last
no inch
along the road
would be given to you
on a measured journey of miles
the distance between stops
somehow moved me
backward
but once
the day arose
for you to be seated
where freedom often found itself
i was moved forward, black
like those wheels of
progress
we turned
a right corner—
left injustice fuming
in the movement’s exhausting wake
at last we grew closer
to being first…
human
Carol Elizabeth Owens is an attorney and counselor-at-law in Western New York (by way of Long Island and New York City). She enjoys technical and creative writing. Her poetry has been published in several print and virtual publications. Ms. Owens loves the ways in which words work when poetry allows them to come out and play. The poem "Passage Way" above is written in a form called eintou (which is West African for "pearl," as in "pearls of wisdom").