Nelly Craig lived in the 1800s
got pregnant and abandoned
by a heartless philanderer
scorned by the society of that day
refused respectable employment
impoverished, desperate,
turned to prostitution to survive
her only means of making money
because of the stigma of being
a disgraced, fallen women
a pariah nobody would hire
some back then would have
deemed Nelly a hell-bound sinner
I see her as a causality of
less enlightened times
that no loving Creator
would ever eternally damn.
Bob Boyd