A Poem a Day (618): 48 years

Glynn Simmons, aged 70, was released from prison in July 2023. In December, he was declared innocent in the 1974 murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers. His is the longest-known wrongful conviction in the US.

According to Wikipedia, by February 2020, a total of 2,551 exonerations were mentioned in the National Registry of Exonerations in the US. The total time spent by these exonerated people in prison adds up to 22,540 years. 

As of January 2020, the Innocence Project has documented more than 375 DNA exonerations in the US. Twenty-one of these exonerees had been sentenced to death. The National Registry of Exonerations is a public database that records all exonerations in the US since 1989, including cases in which DNA played a limited or no role. In January 2020, the database contained more than 3,300 cases. 

 

48 years (a ghazal)

 

Incarceration...

How would you feel if you won the day, your freedom,

knowing a cold white injustice stole away that freedom?

 

Uncomfortable are the seconds stretched long, nowhere to hide

in the void between hours where you pay for the guilty’s freedom.

 

The wronged speak from the same page, made silent, voiceless,

step inside themselves, knowing the state did slay their freedom.

 

There’s this physical cage and the one you build in your mind,

the one that tries to stop you breaking as you pray for freedom.

 

You line your walls with photographs, memories and people,

to warm you on these icy nights you cry weary for your freedom.

 

There’s a man who whistles each and every morning that he rises,

full of hope til nighttime strangles this poor grey semblance of freedom.

 

These steel bars can play a chord, tap a song, without dance.

This numbness devoid of motion makes us clay without freedom.

 

We wait in line, a queue with no end, our misery a silent hum.

We are not who we were when we could lay down in freedom.

 

Pink dawn throws light on our horizon, promises an ever-after,

a tomorrow when we can walk outside and feel okay, in freedom.

 

... and liberation

 

Someone told a lie, ignored the facts, and they sentenced you,

but you always knew you’d be handed back one day your freedom.

 

You drive beneath the strewn-out stars, down to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Seasons change, but it feels the same, this sacred way of freedom.

 

It’s a view you haven’t known for near five decades long,

but it’s like yesterday, and you savour this sweet sway of freedom.

 

Yours is the longest-known wrong conviction in all America.

And yours was the longest-ever pathway back to freedom.

 

You know they set you up and they paid no care about justice.

But this Christmas you ate with family, no castaway from freedom.

 

The real murderer, he’s still out there, I guess. He stayed silent.

But today you walk out high, walk proud this day in freedom.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, January 6, 2024