The Wall

Last week I had the privilege of watching a presentation by Dan Millis of the Sierra Club Borderlands campaign. Dan presented a film called "Wild vs. Wall" about the Border Wall and its cost to border ecology, as well as the monetary cost to taxpayers. You can find more information at www.sierraclub.org/borderlands.

One of the lines that Dan mentioned in his presentation was "there are nearly 2000 miles from Friendship to Hope." This refers to the fact that the wall is being built through Friendship Park near Tijuana and San Diego; the promise for better relations between two countries broken by its construction. Almost 2000 miles away, in Brownsville, Texas, the wall is being built in a park named Hope. Ironic, sad and expensive in terms of dollars, loss of life, and loss of faith that we can work together. I tried to write a poem that lived up to some of this thought, and here it is.


The Wall

Nearly two thousand miles from Friendship to Hope,
The Wall rises in cancer clusters of concrete and steel.
A dividing line between compassion and fear,
Constructed in borderlands from California to Texas
and in our dark interior spaces.

Where once porous membrane allowed ebb and flow
Rusty barriers bisect no man’s land that selectively holds
Back water, rattlers and big cats while
The siren call of dollars filters through, drawing people
Over or under, a delay of five minutes in their active transport.

Then five days’ dusty journey from Nogales to Tucson,
Broken feet stumble on rocks in the darkness as
Two thousand years ago refugees trudged
The same distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
There was no room for them, either.

What journey ends well that starts with a wall?
Can it close only in the cave of a detention cell or
A sweaty deportation bus?
White sanded bones in the desert or sterile hospital room;
There are no wise men here.