On the Border

The photo speaks a thousand words, one 

for each mile they travelled 

Baby on her father’s back

tucked inside his T-shirt,

face down in the waters of the Rio Grande,

hair trimmed in reeds instead of ribbons 

Abrogation of the Dream

that persuaded her family to flee

a thousand miles’ journey to the border

and the torch-bearing promise of freedom

to be denied.

The photo of the baby and her father

who set his daughter on the banks of a new world 

and swam back for her mother,

never intending to end up in the river

or hear his wife scream as their future

jumped back into swift currents

and was swept away.

If you are brown and poor and desperate,

do not come to America 

Color is skin-deep

like sky and earth, fire and blood

All shades mingle transparent in water

that gives life or takes life 

in the chance current,

water that births us in chance skin

Valeria’s arm, still slung around her father

Oscar’s neck, in death’s tableau

Remember them, and let your heart

break, just a little