Martin Luther King’s Dream For America

About this poem

Dr. Martin Luther King, Prophet, Healer, and Seer: This poem was composed as an acrostic ode to honor the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), America’s civil rights leader and national hero. The poem is composed with four unrhymed stanzas, the first two stanzas composed with six lines each; the third with four lines; and the last or fourth stanza consisting of two lines. The entire poem is written with a consistent alternating pattern of a 10-8 measure, the first line of the first stanza consisting of 10 beats, and the last line of the last two-line stanza consisting of eight beats. Altogether, the four-stanza acrostic poem begins stylistically with a 10-beat measure, and concludes with an eight-beat measure. POSTSCRIPT: I had the privilege, if ever so briefly, of meeting, greeting, and shaking hands with the civil rights icon, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King when, in 1964, he visited the New York publishing house of Educational Heritage, Incorporated (known also then as Negro Heritage Library), located at 733 Yonkers Avenue, Yonkers, New York), that prepared and edited the manuscripts of Dr. Martin Luther King, and those of other prominent world-wide writers, journalists, and poets of African-American descent, living or deceased. During that period of time, I was hired as a proofreader under the tutelage of other civil rights foot soldiers and ground workers at the publishing house that was administered by the Reverend Dr. Wyatt T. Walker, Vice President of the publishing house, the lead pastor of Harlem’s First Ebenezer Baptist Church, and a close colleague of Dr. King’s during the height of the civil rights struggles in the south, in Montgomery, Alabama. See my earlier written poem, “King, The Icon,” published online on poetry.com on December 18, 2021, that refers briefly to my historic encounter with Dr. Martin Luther King. POSTSCRIPT: “Justice With Wisdom is Justice With Love.” ❤️ more »