Thursday, March 5, 2015

A Room of My Own: Border Haiku

written in response to the "Made-in-America" Immigration Crisis

El Paso twilight
a body straddles
the white border line


Note: El Paso, Texas stands on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte, the fifth longest river of North America), across the border from Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Below is my another poem about this border river:

A Tale of Two Laredos
    
The fireman from Nuevo Laredo looks at the body, muttering, “This is the 6ooth body I’ve pulled out of the Rio Grande.” There is noisy silence between the two of us as I turn and see a long line of trucks crossing into Texas.  We continue to make our way downriver and, upon turning a bend, I see a boy and his dog caught in branches at the river’s edge.
    
one howl, then many …
the imprint of an eagle
on the winter sky

Cattails, 1, December 2013

1 comment:

  1. Below is the remark by Cattails Haibun Editor, Mike Rehling:

    Does not happen often that I accept a haibun after just one reading, BUT you got it!
    Thanks, that haiku at the end sealed the deal for me...

    The following is a set of tanka on this borderland issue, which was first published here on June 28, 2013:

    A Room of My Own: Borderland Tanka Set

    raining nights
    in bloody 1846...
    a Mexican yells out
    We didn’t cross the border
    The border crossed us

    a mother's hands
    reach out to her children
    through the bars
    of a fence that divides
    Mexico from Arizona

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