Envision freedom as a circle spanning three hundred and sixty degrees

 

And sitting at the circle’s center you are at liberty to swivel and tilt at will

 

Mesmerized by the seemingly limitless opportunities that beckon

 

Within each degree a fountainhead suffused with vocation

 

And you are at liberty to choose among many choices

 

Without incarceration, custody or constraint

 

A path imbued and pregnant with destiny

 

And though you must endure sacrifice to excel

 

Born to love and felicity

 

The only obstacle before you

 

Is to leap without reservation along a path already foreordained with peace and prosperity

 

But

 

Such liberties remain the preserve of kings and queens, lords and noblemen

 

And few among us inherit such glory

 

And you are not among them

 

Your pitiful birthright barely spans a degree of opportunity

 

And you will always peer into the warm from the cold outside

 

A swaddling cast upon a landscape of turgid black-peppered earth

 

A pauper not a prince, an enslaved soil tiller not a king

 

A birthright so pitiful you barely command a grain of sand from deserts sweeping so vast

 

Nor can you imbibe a single drop of water from oceans wet and ebbing

 

Bound by societal chains, suppression, racism and misogyny

 

A destiny hijacked and shackled to invisible nemesis

 

And after endless toil you are overcome by exhaustion and lassitude

 

Your subaltern fate draws ever nearer

 

A sheaf waiting for the sickle

 

But

 

Sudden like a stowaway

 

Escaping from a labyrinth of barricaded opportunity

 

A solitary voice breaches the ramparts of darkness without supplication

 

A message so powerful and pure it radiates outwards across the universe

 

Into hearts that have long ceased to yearn

 

And woebegone souls that have long ceased to dream

 

And awaking from your poverty induced stupor

 

Freedom becomes your final act of rebellion from mental slavery

 

And with the liberty dreamer now awakened within you

 

You possess the key to a circle of opportunity suffused with vocation

By Peter J. Middlebrook