Poetry / “The Tree By the Fence” (an allegory of the slave trade)

When enclosing our property,
There was one minor dent:
We’d forgotten about
The tree by the fence.
‘Twas an oak – nothing special,
No facets divine –
Who so grieved at out mistake,
Yet we knew not for some time.
Oh, how he shook his branches like fists in the wind,
Threatening to fall on our house or near it,
An his blood boiled in frustration,
And he screamed, and he sobbed
And looked out with the face of a gathering mob.
He begged, and he pleaded and consulted his God,
Yet nothing availed. He was stuck with the job.
He sat there in horror
And looked at his bride,
His friends and his kin
All stripped of their hide.
Now, naked and exposed, without dignity, so to speak,
They all served the sole purpose
Of forming a link-
Ed fence – their offense and our defense –
To protect the owners’ wits.
Wasted and hated, debated and traded as planks
Were the trees,
Until, one day, a woman
At last heard their pleas.
She realized an error in human mentality:
Should fences be fences,
Or should fences be trees?