A fresh breeze
Sails billowing
We have set a new course

No longer caught in irons
Going nowhere fast
We have a new captain at the helm

The old one's unsteady hand
His wandering gaze
Recede into the haze behind us

We loaded both him and his crew
into long boats
like Bligh many years back

Tortured by water
They are hoisted on their own petards
Like characters in Dante's Inferno
In some ironic twist
We leave them behind

For the sharks
The historians
and the courts

Justice beckons from the horizon
And Decency raises her head from weeping

America remembers the music
and the words to her song
Sweet land of liberty
My country, 'tis of Thee
We sing

© 2009, Jamie McKenzie