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A few days after Elizabeth Alexander visited Dalton, my class started writing Amistad poems of our own. My inspiration was from when Elizabeth Alexander reminded us that there were other people on the boat not just Cinque. I was going to do a poem about Cinque but then I decided to make it about a different person that wasn’t actually real but it might of happened to someone on the boat this is my poem:

Taken Captive

Five years ago I was taken from my home, my wife and my children,

Taken captive to be a white man’s slave,

I can still remember my village and my family,

I will never forget them,

To my dying day I will carry an image of them in my head,

If I got to have any wish I would wish to be home, in Africa, happy with my family watching the stars,

The stars that reassure you that you will be fine,

That is not the case,

Right now I am being taken into a ship,

A ship that means friendship and happiness,

It’s called Amistad,

I have been on one ship before,

One when I was first taken,

Will it bring the happiness and joy that someone stuck deep into the roots of it’s name?

Will it be like the other ship?

Dark, and miserable,

Or will it be the kind of ship I have been waiting for where things are better and the wind tells you that you are going home?

I get on the boat and look up at the stars,

I know that someday I will see my family and village again.