Quantum Identity III: False Dichotomies and Walls that Must be Broken
Yuma, Dallas, and Everywhere Else
A black gash
Across the white dunes
Separates
Us
From them
As if these great barriers of sand
And desiccating wilderness
Would not faithfully claim its victims
In punishment
For their trespass
Across imaginary lines
I imagine the shifting mountains
Swallowing up great swaths of fence
Building bridges
Grain by grain
Across the black steel
And in so doing
Whispering to each of us
To be a tiny crystal
In the great dune of humankind
Of human kindness
To let our fences
And walls
Become relics
Falling apart
Under the brilliant light
Of an ancient sun
But today
The sandy bricks in the halls of Justice
Fall apart
Under the weight of similar lines
Similar fences
Similar walls
As we arm a nation of untrained civilians
Hoping they will still be civil
On both sides of a gun
As we criminalize pigment
And deny our privilege
And scream about rules and rights and constitutions
Until the people on the other side
Want our rules to apply equally to them too
But there is no other side
Our fathers drew the lines
And built the fences
And we can take them down
We are all sand
All of us
Blown about by the wind
Until
Collectively
We make a dune
A bridge
Or even better
A place where things can grow
Where we let the many-colored roots
Of many different things
Anchor us
Settle us
Into a land of peace
A land of plenty
Where sand begets seeds
And seeds beget grain
And grain begets harvests
That feed any who hunger
At the communion table
We set for all