Immigration Poem by Robert Ronnow

Immigration



I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration, Jane
passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless
      world.
That's a new idea to her.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're
      working around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the
      planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut
      grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from
      Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes,
      biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The
      fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its
      righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.

Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant
      in North America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker,
      no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message and my wife says he's
      probably Jewish.
No one wants to go there.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never
      happened or slavery was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet? Two
      children have
replacement value. In China is it each couple or each
      adult that gets
one offspring? As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener,
      tighter cities
surrounded by farms surrounded by forests.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and
      agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests,
      deserts, grasslands, space.

Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.

Thursday, January 1, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: america,baseball,children,city,family,holocaust,immigration,lovers,poets,slavery
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