Bollards Speak

The eagle's talons drop down to seize its prey.

The vulture closes in behind on patient wings of silent pursuit,

Ready to erase all signs of life once passing here.


Bollards form the canvas,

Following the border line—

A line drawn in sand—

Only partially obscuring the ugliness behind.

A rusty barbed wire fence twice draped in shiny coils of concertina wire,

Another line of bollards,

O’erlooked by towers arrayed with electronics,

The Berlin wall upgraded and modernized,

Technologically outfitted and state of the art,

Surveilling all that moves across the sandy expanse,

Terrain made uninhabitable,

Made unwelcoming,

Promising violence,

Promising nothing like liberty,

Nothing like a land of the free,

A land for the free,

A home of the brave,

Interrupting and destroying this friendship park between two nations.

Where once a First Lady ordered cut a barbed wire fence

To greet, touch, and embrace a neighboring people,

Here now names of veterans adorn bollards—

Those deported after serving a nation ignoring its promises—again—

A nation with no room for the brave it imported,

Now crying for reunion with family left behind.


Here now the eagle's talons but promise violence,

The vulture seeking scraps left behind,

The empty, sun-baked sands cleaning up what life and friendship might have brought a thirsty land,

The hope of peace and friendship and partnership,

A brave world where all belong,

A world unafraid to live and love and let live freely.


10/18/2025,
Somewhere in Texas airspace

— ©Copyright 2025, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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