A Poem I Wrote Last Year

     This is a poem I wrote last year after reading
a novel called 'Little Bee' about a Nigerian
refugee girl in England.  I cannot recall the author
but I will recount it in another post.


                         I Am


I am a Nigerian girl, a refugee, guilty only of 
seeing my family murdered over an oil war,
I am Ann Frank in a hiding place in Amsterdam,
my demise approaching evermore.


I am a Russian girl sold into slavery,
I am a blind girl stumbling in the night.
I am less than a widow, a woman left behind
to raise children in joy and sorrow.


The suffering that some experience
leaves me in utter humble silence and reverence,
for some have suffered as much as Jesus.


     I wanted to write something appropriate
for such an occasion as the day to celebrate the
birth of the great hero Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
and I felt that this poem would suffice.