There’s a compulsion to sing of ranches outside El Paso
where cumbias and gritos keep everyone happy.
Meditating on the familiar, I remember the fence,
the border and being alone. Better to be in the open
desert than caged. Men in rags once slept on our lawn.
Look, I am honoring men and mothers who cry.
Tornillo, a tent city, 471 parents deported
without their children. Pesos traded for freedom
that never came. What is it that divides us?
A fence, metal reaching high to the sky
along a highway or hate? Juárez’s huge Mexican flag
flapping nearby. I walk down a sandy
path. All that is familiar, a mirage.
There is only one pond in El Paso at Ascarate park.
The ducks there thin and hungry for more than bread.
The powerful have the strongest appetite.
The buildings are teaching us all things fall.
The demagogue bites cleanly.
If I could calm the angry mob,
and send Mexico a song, I would.
The Rio Grande a slow drying hope. The Santa Fe Bridge
and its crossers know what we don’t or won’t.
The deportees are seeking tenderness,
the shadow on the wall of the oval office berates
the universe. How bitterly we argue or remain silent.