Aubade for Angela
(for Angela, enslaved, Jamestown, Virginia 1619)
I can only say the new day
is as much yours as anyone’s.
It’s real estate designed for you just like
the moon is an unpriced parcel of land.
It's yours like the wild grass, the ancient
oaks, the murmuration of starlings.
All the natural world
is as much your gift as anyone's.
Fetters can’t change that.
You hold no keys, but
mountains and rivers
have no locks nor
the amber sun, the clouds’ wisps,
the expansive morning blue
and hope of heaven beyond
all belong to you.
I can’t tell you how to navigate
bondage—when or where to run.
I grope for solace in the unthinkable
knowing nothing of chains.
is as much yours as anyone’s.
It’s real estate designed for you just like
the moon is an unpriced parcel of land.
It's yours like the wild grass, the ancient
oaks, the murmuration of starlings.
All the natural world
is as much your gift as anyone's.
Fetters can’t change that.
You hold no keys, but
mountains and rivers
have no locks nor
the amber sun, the clouds’ wisps,
the expansive morning blue
and hope of heaven beyond
all belong to you.
I can’t tell you how to navigate
bondage—when or where to run.
I grope for solace in the unthinkable
knowing nothing of chains.
September 2024
Ellen June Wright is an American poet with British and Caribbean roots. Her work has been published in Plume, Tar River, Missouri Review, Verse Daily, Gulf Stream, Solstice, Louisiana Literature, Leon Literary Review, North American Review, Prelude and Gulf Coast, and is forthcoming in the Cimarron Review. She’s a Cave Canem and Hurston/Wright alumna and has received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations.
Art: Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Childhood Faultlines. Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, mica flakes on basswood panel, 2023.