In my 1999 book On the Bus with Rosa Parks – in this sequence, the titular sequence, I speculate not only on Rosa Parks’ historic non-doing, her refusing to give up her seat on the segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, but also speculate on any moment in history when one is suddenly confronted with a choice – what would one do.
Rosa
How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.
That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.
Doing nothing was the the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.
How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.
