POEMS/ Prayer for Immigrants
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Prayer for Immigrants

​May you not be tethered
at the border, brittle
as dried tumble weed,
caught, no place to burrow.

May you not be closed
locked in a truck
left in the hot sun
without air or water,

listening to the broken
breath, the gasps and tears
calls for help that come
too late for far too many.

May your way open
alive to the astonishment
of bells, laughter of children,
pilgrims in a new land,

safe from hunger, fear.
When the gate opens
may you walk into promise, 
through fields of bluebonnets,

past danger, and may 
those who greet you
remember how millions
of them left home and country

risking storms and steerage
heat, hurricanes, and blizzards,
illness and death and hard labor
for a new life like you.


This poem appears in Finding Ithaca.

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