Borders are in Season

Borders are in Season

For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven…
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
– Ecclesiastes 3

Creation swirls, shifts in endless motion
seeking balance in rhythms guided
by season. Sandhills dance in devotion,
blown in on warm spring winds. I’m reminded

when autumn arrived my grandparents packed
their Airstream and fled south after first frost
as if nature betrayed them and attacked
without mercy. But no borders were crossed

in their sojourn and they, like cranes, would soon
return home, a privilege the outcast
Salvadoran and Syrian can’t assume
until threat of violence and bomb’s blast

have faded into history. Borders
matter, mostly to my white elderly
grandparents to keep poor and brown horrors
from disturbing their childhood memory

of peaceful, pleasantly calm suburban
streets. Oh, to be a crane and take to wing
when grandpa is possessed by his bourbon
fueled harangues, to soar high above and sing

free from borders and the calamity
of fear – this is what forms a foundation
upon which loving community
blooms, swirls and shifts in endless creation.

©2019 Kenneth W. Arthur