OPPRESSED

This is a poem to be read
lying down.
When it is hard to make your voice loud.
Because it is hard to make your voice loud
when you are oppressed.
Because when you are oppressed,
having enough food to be energetic
is not a foregone conclusion.
Having the ability to stand up
with good health each day
is not a given.
Experiencing the capriciousness
of life's calamities
and having the pliability of resources
to weather the turbulence
is not something that you have known.
Instead you have known
the difficulty
of being involuntarily submerged under the waves
and fighting back to the surface
with gasping breaths.
Perhaps not everybody has known it,
and perhaps you have not known it often.
But what you have known most densely,
is the distinctive feeling
of reaching up, for something,
and not being able to reach it,
because being oppressed
is like being lying down.