Tears swell along Rio Tijuana’s littered banks

strewn with detritus and dreams beyond it’s shore,

for a Liberty whose arms no longer open

to the tired, the hungry, the huddled masses.

A Nation’s soul sours in fear’s ferment

behind a wall built of block and iron

that became our prison.

We cannot countenance a God

who beholds no borders but holds to himself

the child in a mother’s embrace,

and weeps over the world that

rips him from her arms in law’s cold precision,

as if He has forgotten Maria’s breast that held Him near,

and does not cherish the blessed moment

when humanity first cradled Him

in the hope that on some distant day

they might learn to hold each other.

© Jedidiah Paschall