TWELVE RIGHTS

Locked under a metal sheet
Shelter me from driving rain
Sufficient food for me to eat
Daily bread to ease my pain.

Wounds are bound and illness treated
Adequate care if no cure
Rats can't reach me when I'm seated
Non-lethal vermin I endure.

I practice religion in my own way
Calling on Jesus, Allah or the Pope
Spouse's photo keeps defeat at bay
St Christopher's medal helps me to cope.

Personal mail both comes and goes
If carried by exhausted snail
Red Cross packages sometimes depose
Books and manna and hope so frail.

My captors give me treatment humane,
Even though I am kept confined,
And against any charges they arraign
I can be represented by my own kind.

Tattered pages in my tongue to read,
Of the Geneva Convention
And the rules of the camp I should heed
To help survive my detention.

©Copyright June 5, 2002 by Ray W. Sarlin

Written for the June 2006 IWVPA Club Theme Project, Prisoner of War