Author's Note: A found poem I wrote in English class using words from Fredrick Douglass's Narrative and rearranging them

Freedom’s Way

Oh that I were free!

Could I but swim!

The glad ship is gone;

she hides in the dim distance.

-- --- --

If I could only Fly!

Freedom’s swift-winged angels

you move merrily before the gentle gale.

Were I under your protecting wing!

-- --- --

O, Why was I born a man?

Fast in my chains,

left in the hottest hell.

Unending slavery.

-- --- --

O God, deliver me!

With but one life to lose,

be killed running, never standing.

Go on, go on, to freedom’s way.