Once again the innocent die young,
as rabid wolf packs roam across
the urban landscape. People say
this is the cost of borders, as if mercy
is unaffordable, that brown-skinned humans
have brought this ICE age to our country,
to be paraded in the streets
in their underwear, immune to hypothermia,
put in cages where alligators patrol in swamps.
There, fluorescent lights never dim, there,
names are butchered like hogs,
and the small boy in a bunny hat, cannot
be roused from night terrors, screaming
for his mother who believed in the promise
of this country where mornings could be gentle.
Anarchy has shredded morality, the worst
deny complicity while rage bangs at the foundations
of Lady Liberty, threatening the aspirations
of our founders. What astonishes me
is how quietly I learn to live beside it, as shrapnel
keeps falling on television screens in other places,
until the nightly ritual becomes normal.
How my soul is shamed when Alex and Renee
are blown away like leaves in a vicious storm.
Somewhere a teacher is telling her students
that borders are lines on a map drawn by men,
but compassion is older than any country,
that Gandhi, through fasting and peaceful protest
moved millions. And I want to believe,
that even in this tyranny of ICE,
a symphony of citizens’ voices will gather
light at the edge of a long winter,
that will herald the thaw.
