Vagueness

In most U.S. History books what went down with Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955 is fairly clear-cut. That's sometimes what history books are good for—laying out the facts. But poems are good for more than fact-finding. Poetry is art, and in this poem Dove is interested in exploring the gray, intangible parts that make Rosa Parks human. It's not that Dove doesn't care about the major event that made Parks famous, it's that she knows that we already know! This poem was written about fifty years after the event, so she doesn't need to chronicle every detail. Instead, Dove creates a picture of Rosa Parks, the person, even if the camera is a little out of focus sometimes.

• Line 1: Who? Where? We can probably answer the who part, given that this line comes right after the title. And we can guess at the where part—the bus seat?—but we can't be sure. Right off the bat, Dove is making it clear that she's not focusing on the particulars of December 1, 1955 so much as the woman behind the event.
• Line 2: Again, rather than throw us a bone and give us the specific place name, Dove chooses not to specify the exact place. 
• Line 5: We can do some guesswork with the bench—could be the bus seat, could be a commemorative bench with Parks' name engraved in it—but we don't know exactly, because Dove doesn't tell us. 
• Line 11: This might be the vaguest moment in a poem chock-full of vagueness. "They" could really be anyone. Whoever they are, they're decent enough to pick up a lady's purse for her, so hats off for that, anyway.