Cry Freedom

Today's poem is a sonnet about liberty. I would like to think the days of slave owning are gone, but the trafficking of human beings has just become more submerged and taken new forms.

There are children taken by Boko Haram, women taken by the Islamic State, and in the UK, people who prey on immigrants and lure them in with a false promise, only to use them in the sex trade.

The plantations of the Deep South of America may no longer see the whip, but the cords that bind many are still in use, even if they take more invisible forms than chains of iron. It is an evil that we must fight,.

While the poem is a sonnet, I have deliberately shortened the rhyming pattern in the last verse of each of the three main stanzas for an effect of abruptness.

Cry Freedom

I remember my last day of liberty
A prisoner standing in the dock
Flung into the dark, I could not see
The key turned in the lock

Paraded out, goods for sale
Auctioned off as healthy lot
No escaping from this jail
Ropes that bind with knot

Out in the fields, work so hard
And a whip, for those who slack
Always being on one’s guard
Blood streaks down the back

Oh, crying freedom every night
We weep at our unhappy plight