Undocumented
Maureen Tolman Flannery
They walk for days in the desert
beat down upon by the heat of a hostile sun
by the wants of a wife left behind,
by a child's disease
by the needs of a mother who feeds them all
and eats only at her own oversized heart.
The balls of their feet are one thick oozing blister.
And some of them die of sadness
huddled against each other
against the cold of a desert night,
their backs full of cactus spurs
as if each one were San Sebastian.
As they near the high fence
they fear the helicopter's search light,
the signs they cannot read.
They fear the stranger and the compatriot,
the night and the day,
the coyote they have paid a family's life savings
to keep them safe,
the guns of the border guards
and the thunder in their ears
of their own fragile hearts drumming
like tambores of the festival dancers back home.
Hope and hunger swirl into a tailwind
sweeping them north toward the border.
Desperation drives them over;
the INS sends them back much faster.
When it comes against the edge
which deed, I wonder,
should be the honored claim,
or should it be need?
And how many must die for a chance
at what those who have it
don't even want?
And what, then, is the bottom line,
and who has crossed it?