By Nels Hanson
In a cave in Abington, Pennsylvania,
dwarf and hunchback, once common
sailor, Benjamin Lay lived alone. No
thing grown or made by slave labor
would he touch, instantly he walked
away from any supper if he learned
his host owned black slaves. Only
water and milk he tasted and ate just
fruit and vegetables to spare animals
each harboring an inner light. Even
Quakers saw him deformed in mind
and body, ignored his fiery warnings
slavery would ruin our country. We
should live simply in nature, he said,
raise our own food and make our own
clothes, as he must have done unless
he wore the garments of hurt children.
In the country of the blind a one-eyed
man is no king but a slave. So huge,
the little man has no statue, no stone
exists large enough to carve his heart,
his hump. Shame always on those who
never listened to the misshapen one,
tallest in America, deep shame on us,
on ears and eyes gone deaf and blind,
on anyone who can’t recognize a king.
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
