Detroit Riot, 1967--The View from Sinai Hospital
It's hard to believe but it will soon be the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit Riot. I was the hospital administrator on duty at Sinai Hospital of Detroit the night the riots broke out. It was a powerful and frightening time which I tried to capture in the following poem. Did I succeed? Comments welcome.
DETROIT, 1967*
Seen from the hospital rooftop, the cityscape blazed orange with hot flames. From left to right and up and down the whole horizon flickered, and licked the gray and clouded ceiling of the sky, its heat too distant to relieve the chill felt by the stunned observer who shivered with both fear and fascination.
From this high spot, as though observed by some great bird, nested aloft and safe in forest trees, squinting at the conflagration down below, hazy lifeforms could be dimly seen scattering like buckshot.
Bullets whistled past (or into) treasure hunter heads and bodies, captured by the frenzy of the moment. Danger and the novelty of curfew could not dissuade them from their greedy quests.
Noisily overhead, the throaty throb of army helicopter blades, like monster ceiling fans, beat the air into a pulsing wind. Green tanks lumbered clumsily upon the city streets, their phallic cannons panned the avenues, and dared the foolish to a challenge.
The thwak of sniper slugs shattering shatterproof window glass in buses under seige brought workers to their knees where they crouched and prayed for safety.
Yet they came. Risking everything, while the city burned. Amidst the looting and the maiming, the fighting and the killing, the caregivers came, refusing to abandon their sick charges trapped within the sphere of chaos.
With the daylight, when the fever and the fire both had cooled, when the whirleybirds were hangared and the tanks again garaged, some looked around with shame at what they'd wrought upon their own; while others, without bluster or apology, hugged their grateful patients and went home.
*Published by the Detroit Jewish News, 2002, Special Edition regarding the 1967 Riot
