Revenant

Revenant

(Advent or anytime)

 

This is my country now

We brutalize the families

At the border

And the young who attack them

We can remember what

This did to us in Viet Nam

If we want to

The enemy had wrecked the families

First, and then we had

To finish its work

It was strategy

What is this?

What child is this?

 

For every war we cause with someone

Small,

We make it harder for the Christ child

Or any child

Any family

To come here

 

C L Couch

 

 

Reuters

This photograph by @Reuters shows the United States of America firing tear gas at women and children.

 

Near-Dead Reckoning

Near-Dead Reckoning

 

If I had children

To rear (that used to be the proper

Word), I’ve little doubt

I’d treasure some time apart, now

And then

There’s a story of the mother of my

Namesake

 

She was going to walk

Around the hundred-acre wood

Her son asked to go

And she said no

But when I return

Welcome me

As if I had been gone far

Away for a long time

 

Nowadays what guilt the mom or dad

Must feel to know

That children are taken from their

Parents with no returning

Promised

 

The parents now are criminals, they’ll say

Trying to enter by

Liberty’s calling

 

The children are caged, too

 

Everyone is guilty, by the way

Not one of us gets off

Unless we’re trying

 

God will accept a prayer

To bring entire families

Along with sanity

To what has been happening

 

My father’s people were

Here to tie

Up the ships of all the rest

My mother’s people, there’s a problem

Only a few generations here

So I’ll

Have to take my chances

 

Warming up to say

That without family

Without the value placed

Up on the shelf in pride of place

 

That what have we of home

A nation of all promises

Is dust collecting

In an empty place

 

I don’t have all the answers

I don’t know all the rest

But I think impracticality also

Becomes illicit

When we break the bond

That promises compound reckoning

The nuclei destroyed

Hostility left to orbit like

Errant electrons

 

Preachy

And sing-songy

Yes, I know

 

But there it is, I’ll ‘fess up,

And if you’ve come this far

We can go farther

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://www.expatsinvallarta.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Nogales-Tuscon-sign (/jpg)

 

Border Talk

Border Talk

 

I don’t know what to say about

A family torn apart

I never had that feeling

Once I thought I’d lost part of my family in

A famous fire

I was hundreds of miles away

I cried for a day to find

It wasn’t true

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://keranews.org/post/view-border-mcallen-locals-debate-child-immigration-crisis

 

H is for History

H is for History

 

History is not experience

But a record of what happened

 

My father liked to tell stories

Of growing up along Puget

Sound, which he swam across

Part of with regularity

 

Well, it seems that a border

Dispute arose between folks

In Seattle (probably Olympia,

State capital and southerly

Sound-located) and those in

Vancouver and of all the parts

On both sides—

 

A conflict of two nations, as

It were, Canada and the USA

 

One day the problem was

Resolved in a game of baseball

 

The border was settled over

Nine-innings’ play

 

I don’t recall who won; maybe

I was never told—that’s not

The point—the day was saved

Not with guns but by a game,

Sporting in every way

 

My father’s storytelling was

History—and is—a recording

Of the time and what transpired

 

My telling this to you becomes

A history as well

 

How about making a history

For yours

 

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/