Sometimes it is the emotion of moment
That runs headlong into a sticky situation
Caught between two worlds and lost to both
And yet with puppy eyes we beg for the one we cannot have.
I suppose it's an understandable situation
After all, it only takes one red shirt
Mixed-in with the whites
To embarrass the entire load
Into a lovely shade of pink
That cannot be worn to a proper Sunday meeting,
But when you put Boosy into the mix
It is only natural to expect
It all to go to hell in a handcart.
A black kid on a white street in the late fifties,
And I never gave it a second thought in my naiveté.
But Mrs. Child did, and with a vengeance when she threw me
Out of her Sunday school class on Sunday next.
It's what you would call a learning experience
Somehow thinking we were all the same and believing it.
Thanking Mrs. Child to this very day for my early desegregation lesson
Teaching me all about the essential meaning
Of “her god's love”.