Angele Toomey Poetry

What a journey across rhyme, verse and stanza!

For my last boot camp offering, I have a somewhat twee exploration of the notion of freedom, and how the yearning for it survives. It is dedicated to all the people fighting for their freedom right now and to those surviving on the hope that their children’s children will walk in its light.

Freedom 
You cannot extinguish the light of freedom.   
You can shoot the messenger;   
turn off the electricity; 
or destroy network connections   
through which it flows more readily,  
but you cannot extinguish the light of freedom.  
That deep yearning comes from a place  
that torture cannot reach.  
It has manifested across millennia,  
often carried by people who did the most seditious thing imaginable-  
they lived.  
You cannot extinguish the light of freedom  
Because it is written in our DNA:  
It does not need symbols or words.  
Long after you have fallen,  
a mere footnote in history;  
Long after your bones are dust,  
The light of freedom will burn on.

I could not imagine a better image for freedom than a woman of colour, standing in the light of a new day with a horizon of possibilities stretched out before her. #BlackLivesMatter