Despair is full-face, full-body

the reaching gesture –

name it in the eyes of migrant men

in holding pens of Agadez.

They come all the long, weary miles

from Senegal, from Burkina-Faso

all the way from no-job, no-hope countries

across a stricken continent.

The Sahara does not stop them:

despair’s a business chained to smugglers,

trucks pack them over

the scorching sands to Libya

and the Mediterranean

where the continent of hope beckons

like a mirage from across the waters.

They come and come and come

pour into anything that floats

they swim, they drown, they come

a tsunami of despair

in despite of soldiers

a phalanx to halt them

from breaking on their shores.

What do these migrants know or care

about Greece’s, France’s, England’s

panic, anger, fear spreading like disease?

What do Europe’s people know or care

about torched shacks and leveled villages

despair spreading like wildfire?

And so fear and despair collide: tectonic plates

thrusting across fault lines, setting up

for the big one.

          –Emily Rand Breitner

           Boothbay Harbor, Maine

           August 2015