Welcome to America

This poem won second prize in the poetry category at the 2008 El Paso Writer’s League writing contest:

Welcome to America

Hirschfeld washed ashore

In Galveston

My mother’s grandfather

Left bayonets and cannon behind

To raise chickens, cotton, Kinder

But spoke the Prussian tongue

Until he died.

Mesilla, where I meet

My writing friends,

Belonged to Mexico

Back in the day

Of European potentates

Ruling south of our border

Then with a stroke of ink and

A sack of gold

The people stayed and

The border moved—

Welcome to America.

The poet Frost wrote of walls

Unloved but neighborly

Saying “respect my land”

Walls not so high you cannot cross them

Though he’d much prefer

You knocked on his door and

Asked permission to come in.