“If we stray from the path,
we lose the protection of God.”
At 4am, they set out on foot.
Soon after, Joseph bends and throws up.
María pats his back and grimaces.
Within five minutes, he smiles again
takes hold of Maria’s hand, walks.
María carries a garbage bag of belongings,
remembers her brothers,
“They were murdered because they couldn’t pay.
All of their money had gone to help my son.
They died helping my son.”
“Now I feel them walking beside us.
They give me strength to keep going.”
She thinks of all the migrants who travel,
all the ghosts walking through the ages,
from El Salvador and Cuba, Russia and Germany,
from the killing fields of Sudan, Iraq and Syria
to the cotton pickers from Texas
and sodbusters from Oklahoma.
Hebrews wandering in the desert;
herself a pregnant mother from Nazareth
following a distant star.
She can see grandfathers and uncles
in 1931 flee the dust-blown fields
of west Texas and head for California,
seeking jobs and a better life for their kids.
They hop freight trains, join over a million
young men riding the rails. Many die
from suffocating in boxcars, fall beneath
the wheels, or are scraped off roofs
when the trains enter tunnels. Firemen
soak them with water so they’ll freeze.
Railroad police beat them, oftentimes to death.
The poor farmers finally reach California,
where they are met at the border by cops,
resentment, hostility and squalor.
That night a thunderstorm rips over the caravan.
Early the next morning, the eerily abandoned camp
is covered in garbage , along with hundreds
of sleeping bags, clothing, and blankets –
all soaked and trampled into the mud.
It makes Maria think about going home
before she remembers why they are here.
“If we can just reach the US,
have a real home for our son,
that’s what keeps me going.”
That simple wish is her greatest gamble.
They continue north toward America.
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On the road
Re: On the road
As you know, I live in a beach town just north of San Diego. Between the raging fires north of here and the absolute, unbelievable outrageous crisis at the border just to the south I feel like I'm living in some kind of nightmare. There will be no undoing of this harm done and there are still tents over square acres of desert housing children that were separated over a longer period of time than was first thought---no one knows how many. Are they getting medical attention? If they die is anyone informed.
I was born 1942. America was still reeling from images from WWll until I was old enough to remember them even now from newsreels and newspaper photos. I wondered how it could have happened--now I know.
Over 30--sometimes almost 40 percent still support him.
I was born 1942. America was still reeling from images from WWll until I was old enough to remember them even now from newsreels and newspaper photos. I wondered how it could have happened--now I know.
Over 30--sometimes almost 40 percent still support him.
Re: On the road
I hope this does not come across as anti USA. We have had our own refugee crisis, meaning in the eyes of many that we were having the crisis not the refugees. Christmas is coming and it would be interesting to see how Mary and Joseph would do today finding shelter. The words in the poem are lossely based on quotes and the text is an adapted article. We forget how many internal refugees there are within the US and Britain for example