Riehlife Poem-of-the-Day: “The Migrant Jungle,” by David Alan Lucas

I met David Lucas through the St. Louis Writers Guild. Recently, at the Missouri Writers Guild, he was a whirl of activity–making everything work as it should.

David is a poet, genre writer, and blogger. His blogs show his multi-dimensional interests: writing, self-defense, and dating locations in and around St. Louis.

Today on Riehlife he’s sharing his poem “The Migrant Jungle,” and a guest post “Poetry: A Portrait in Motion.” The Migrant Jungle was inspired by a situation in France in 2009. I feel it’s an important commentary on immigration overall–a principle at the heart of building America as we know it. –JGR
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The Migrant Jungle
By David Alan Lucas

Go along the borders of any prosperous land
And you shall find the shanty towns
Where the immigrants have come.
They have not crossed the border,
But are looking for a chance
To come into that land,
To find a new life,
New prosperity,
New hope.
The romance that draws
Them across the possibility of escape
From whatever oppresses them
Or for chance to find
Had been forbidden them
By their circumstance.
The law makers look at these
Dispossessed towns ,
Declare there is too much crime.
How can we possibly let these immigrants
Crawl across the divide
And come into our homeland?
Has that not always been the question
Over time and do not immigrants cross
From border to border,
Over the land,
Cross the sea,
egally or illegally,
Finding ways to be smuggled in?
For they see the golden apples,
The see the path that maybe
Even to them our poor are better off
Than the immigrant on the other side
Of the fence.
Crime in their little shanty towns,
Who is truly surprised,
For have we not created
Through our laws of restriction
A way to keep the possible immigrant out
Despite being a grand melting pot?
Why are we surprised
If the mafia or any organized crime
Do not prey upon
The exploitation of the immigrant’s trail?