poem
Volume 29, Number 3

Diaspora

It was still raining when I got up this morning;
the usual cacophony of dawn chorus was quiet,
I imagine them hiding under bushes or eavestroughs.
A web, translucent and dripping off raindrops,
stretches across deck rails, sans spider of course.

Coffee tastes better on cold, damp mornings,
it seems to have a reassuring effect, like steam
of a small, slow train from a Disney movie,
Mickey as the engine driver and Goofy shoveling
coal into the open mouth of the engine.

It’s on days like this that children miss their mothers.
They wake afraid in a strange land, not knowing
what is to become of them. Children who walked
miles from poverty and harm, now confined in cages,
unaware that monsters come in all shapes and sizes.


—Peter Halpin