Freedom

“Freedom”
Though the word to me personally
Mainly has meant getting my own way
I have felt it as the substance of life itself
And in bitterness have thought the words
“Wage Slave.”

But I have been neither a slave nor a soldier
And when I read the biography of Harriet Tubman
I can’t understand how one human being,
Battered since childhood,
Could do so much.

It wasn’t just that she escaped but that she returned,
Again and again to help others,
That she led Union steamships down the river
Freeing hundreds from plantations
In South Carolina, June 2, 1863,
Navigating around mines,
Not even expecting a military pension
For her many years of service.

It wasn’t just that she did this, but that in 1869,
(Post-Civil War, in New York of all places)
They broke her arm trying to shove her to
The baggage car of the train.

As an old lady she sold simple snacks,
Soda and pies,
Fell for schemes, and could have been
Any poor person struggling.

Yet she still had energy, sick, at 90,
To fight for women’s suffrage
Because her personal freedoms were not just what she felt
When she heard the word “Freedom”

So she passed in 1913, and even in the age of the internet
Google searches remind us there were (and are?)
People who could do things like that.