I swear I'm driving past the old fields
where the pickers were worked to death
and I still feel the whip along my back
time's echoes catch an empathic breath

And the sunrise is a most beautiful thing
but this soil is now sterile and unused
overworked with chemicals and dire need
the earth is now the one wrongly abused

Folk slave in a country dreaming freedom
still holler words like "equality" as they cry
oh "nobody knows the trouble I've seen"
"down by the riverside","ain't got time to die"

Has anything changed much for the many?
the hand of oppression subdued and cheats
generations grew up believing change came
but in a lot of ways it replays and repeats

From my car I imagine cotton drying in sun
fields rich on bones and backs broken before
they'll erase it, build homes poor can't afford
the needy look on to wonder at the eyesore


© .Garry Saunders