From my collection Nearing the Border, 1998, I originally wrote the poem prior to this as part of a sequence titled Years, recollections of personal experiences based on the years in which they occurred and each prompted by a song of that time.

Even in 1974 on a visit to my family then living in Lexington, I hadn’t expected to encounter such overt racism, nor to see the KKK on a rally as I passed by in a bus. Writing this poem some years later, I was still surprised/shocked by the racism continuing, as sadly I and so many others are here in 2017 amidst the racist tragedy in Charlottesville.