In the daguerreotype you look to be about thirty,
the time you settled in Windsor, Canada West,
your likeness stamped on the backdrop
of those long ago black and white days.
I see you toil, fingers stained with the ink of typeset
as you forge your route to glory with the Provincial Freedom
-first newspaper published by a Canadian woman.
One of your eyebrows higher than the other,
you stare out at a world confounded by the view
that freed men and slaves,
and those of whitewashed immigrants,
must live and learn apart;
you kicked all of that out of your way
like debris on a tired path.
All people must mingle, love and share,
be stirred together in your elemental melting pot
to live to learn to protest.
The strength of your teacher's arm,
and your hard-earned law degree, held the cord,
pulled back the curtains on segregated thought.
I see you, ten years old, reading and writing in a Quaker school,
and working in your father's shoemaker shop:
a Delaware station on the Underground Railroad,
watch you process one-way tickets to freedom,
the roots of this Free Man's upbringing
nurturing your abolitionist soul.
