not quite a slave

Not quite a slave

After war number 2 when the time was hard and
oil was undiscovered, hidden under deep waters
when our town stank of stale fish oil and people
made their booze called “sats” guaranteed
free of constipation for a lifetime.
The Social Welfare Council did not have room for
all children were sent to farms as free labor paid for by the state
The farm I was sent to had two daft women
from the town, one had broken into a military
enemy camp spent days there before being thrown out
naked from the vest down.
The other woman was a tragic case, beaten half
to death by her husband, she went blind and kept
falling every so often, still, she was useful
doing the dishes.
There was a boy too good with the animals milked
five cows at six in the morning cleaned their stall
fed the hay and water.
The boy was there because he had a foul temper
that didn't include the animals, which defended
from people, casual cruelties toward all animal
going to school at a small village to an hour walking through fields and woods and occasionally attacked
by rams or angry bulls
I met another boy who had been sent to a farm from
the town, as a boy, was ugly, with strange features like they had been wrongly assembled
We were friends for a while til he was sent back
Years later, I met him, he was the chief engineer on a big tanker, and when the ship was unloading
he always went ashore alone
I wondered why and followed him discretely when
realizing whom he met, I understood his plight
To be gay back then, on a ship, was viewed as a crime
I met him years later, sitting in the park feeding ducks
his loneliness hung around him for him, his freedom
to be himself had come too late
I had been lucky the farmer and his wife were kind
people, but to be sent away as “Legd” another word
for slave, gives you a sense of inferiority that is
hard to shake off