Rosa Parks, whose challenge to the segregated bus system in the southern states of America sparked a civil rights revolution.

There is an art to sitting down and standing up.

Books should be written on the subject,

Motion pictures made, modern dance routines

Worked out and ballets choreographed

In celebration of the simple change of attitude

We undergo at least a hundred times a day.

When Rosa Park put dignity before discomfort

And decided that the ticket she had bought entitled her

To more than just the ride, an elemental change occurred

Deep in the psyche of America, nothing earth-shattering

Initially, rather the opposite extreme, as though

A fragile butterfly had stamped one insignificant foot,

Provoking worms to turn in hitherto unheard of quantities,

Prompting particles of aspiration, pebbles of promise

To roll down hill in an unstoppable cascade,

Bringing along with them the sort of stones which gather up

The moss of mass opinion and precipitate

An avalanche of social change, triggered

The day a seamstress on an Alabama bus

Sat down on principle, stood up for what was right.

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