Page 26 - WTP Vol.IX #3

19
Glosa on Migration
My bones are a family in their tent huddled over a small fire
waiting for the uncertain signal to resume the long march.
— Stanley Kunitz, from “Day of Foreboding”
Each day’s news further depletes my bones. It is not only the deaths
abstracted to numbers,
but disbelief
in the seats of power,
where some seek not to reinvent the kingdom of opportunity
but to banish the very legend, rending child from parent.
My bones are a family in their tent,
switching homes with me all day because it is human to imagine and isn’t empathy a migrant mind? The poet Stanley Kunitz
sat immobile for hours in his garden, ignoring heat and briars,
to win the trust of birds,
who perched on him.
This is what it means to aspire. Huddled over a small fire,
the travelers carry infants,
water, faith in human goodness.
I see them in miniature
around the small blue flames
of my stove, which never goes hungry, as if replenished by angels.
I see young parents saying goodbye to elders or leaving notes,
vowing to create much from little, waiting for the uncertain signal.
Most of us build our fortunes
on someone’s odyssey.
The impulse to pull the gate shut
is kin to the fear our forebears crushed when, by plane or boat or foot,
they made their risky start.
Whether they pictured a palace
or a small garden with birds,
each day they had to invent new arts to resume the long march.
aDRienne Su