Homeland Security: the View from Here
Even though it still feels like winter, with snow in the high country and a chill north wind blowing, spring is upon us, and spring means irrigating alfalfa fields and the hay meadows, and all the farming that will come soon after. It's getting more and more difficult with the immigration situation to find people to help us with these tasks. So here's my reflection on all that for today.
Homeland Security: the View from Here
Icy wind cuts to the bone.
I hurry through the freezing afternoon
To the woodshed.
Three rows deep, firewood packed
Thoughtfully, not too heavy,
Nor too high for me,
Stacked in October
When the afternoons were crisp and golden.
I hear
Miguel’s axe ringing in that autumn twilight
That slides slowly into evening.
Hours after his day is finished,
He splits the head-high pile of rounds
Against this day,
An aging man’s last gift to me before he leaves
For winter,
For Christmas,
To warm up
And come back legal.
Miguel’s gift warms me now
In March’s snows
As he waits in Hermosillo,
trapped
in a web of bureaucracy
and political chest-thumping,
As he waits in Hermosillo, hungry;
His wife, in Colima, hungry
For the visa,
That will not come till fall.
Homeland security.
He is part of ours.