Instead I will go to my workplace where I will get ready for the term that starts on Wednesday, do some accreditation writing, and then have a New Student Orientation. I'm tired just thinking about it. There's shopping to be done (supplies and food for New Student Orientation) and paperwork--lots and lots of paperwork. Sigh.
Let me cheer myself up by remembering last year, when I wrote what would be one of my favorite poems of the year. I had been listening to news stories about various immigration crises, and I thought about the 3 Wise Men and if they had come to the U.S. Border. I made this sketch:
And then I started thinking about a poem with multiple strands: Epiphany, this crisis on the border, the crisis between east and west that ultimately led to the taking down of the wall between East and West Germany, a bit of the underground railroad. Ultimately, this poem arrived, and Sojourners just published it in the latest issue. It's a perfect fit.
Border Lands
I am the border agent who looks
the other way. I am the one
who leaves bottled water in caches
in the harsh border lands I patrol.
I am the one who doesn’t shoot.
I let the people assemble,
with their flickering candles a shimmering
river in the dark. “Let them pray,”
I tell my comrades. “What harm
can come of that?” We holster
our guns, and open a bottle to share.
I am the superior
officer who loses the paperwork
or makes up the statistics.
I am the one who ignores
your e-mails, who cannot be reached
by text or phone, the one
with a full inbox.
When the wise ones
come, as they do, full of dreams,
babbling about the stars
that lead them or messages
from gods or angels,
I open the gates. I don’t alert
the authorities up the road.
Let the kings and emperors
pay for their own intelligence.
I should scan the horizons,
but I tend the garden
I have planted by the shed
where we keep the extra
barbed wires. I grow a variety
of holy trinities: tomatoes, onions,
peppers, beans, squashes of all sorts.
I plant a hedge of sunflowers,
each bright head a north star.
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