We Will Be Free at Last 

By Sandy Lee Carlson

for Justice Southbury

on its fifth anniversary

and the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder 


We have

Come on bended knee

Bent the knee

Taken a knee

Fallen on our knees

In a supplication,

A request that you see:  

Our need

Our humility

Our hope

Our humanity

But you have 

Taken a knee 

To the neck

Of another man

Taken the breath

Of another man

I can’t breathe, he said.

So you leaned harder,

Pouring the rage

Of your age

Out of your body

Pouring out the life of another body

Onto the hard ground

No more sound

No more life

Heart stopped and soul gone

Or so you’d have thought

But here is what you caught 

Under your bended knee:

With cruelty you thought you bought us–

We the people

We the five-fifths human

We who see our freedom as self-evident–

You thought you bought us

A one-way ticket to the past

Before the Great Society promises of 1965

Before one King dared to dream of an America

Where freedom would ring

Across the countryside

Where children would play together

Where children would hold hands

Where being judged 

By the content of our character

Not the color of our skin

Meant we would all have to stand up

As we grew up

To take our neighbor’s hand

To take a stand

And stand and stand

Free as the air we breathe

Holding the self-evident truth

In our clasped hands

That all men and all women

Are created equal

And we will stand tall

And we will walk the walk

Until justice rolls down

Like a mighty river

And each of us 

Is free at last

Free at last

Thanking God almighty

We are free at last