Library of Congress Poetry: Black Knight, Preaching

(I’m exploring poetry through images by tapping into the extensive collection of the Library of Congress on Flickr. There are some amazing images shared with the public and more coming every month or two, it seems. What can inspire you? Be sure to cite where you got the image from. Use Alan Levine’s Flickr Attribution tool and your life is a breeze.)

flickr photo shared by The Library of Congress with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)

The game is bigger
than us,
here on the grass
with me pretending to be black
and you, choosing white,

and somewhere in the distance
we can hear the dream
unfolding as thousands of people

listen intently to his voice,
echoing out into decades to come,
not even sure of the moment they are in

and you call out “check” as if to win
as I defend my position
with a black knight, preaching.

Process Note: There was something about this scene, of two young men playing a game of chess during the 1963 March on Washington that struck me as an intriguing. Of course, there is all sorts of symbolism here — the game, the colors of the pieces, etc. But it was the simple moment of two people engaged in an intellectual pursuit that caught my eye. I wanted to frame the poem beyond race, but I couldn’t.

Peace (in pieces),
Kevin