All the recent talk (and controversies) about immigrants and migration reminded me of one my own family’s stories – about my great grandfather Daniel Krabiel who left Bavaria in 1854, perhaps to avoid being conscripted into a German army, and came to the United States; he ended up migrating even farther, marrying another immigrant (from Great Britain) and farming in Nebraska. When I’ve told this story and played the song, audience members have then told me similar tales of the migratory roots of their family trees. And how else was this country populated? If we are an American, we’re a migrant.
© 2024 Steven E. Cutts
a Studio C recording, September 2024
Someone on our family tree’s long branches stood outside and badly wanted in,
someone who, perhaps, required asylum, perhaps someone who was weighted down with sin,
or someone with a talent rare and special, someone who hated pounding on the door,
someone who was only being human, nothing less but surely nothing more.
We are each and every one a migrant in the grandest sense of time and space.
Stake your claim but only for a moment safe within your gentle state of grace.
“Legal” and “illegal” are the code words protecting all we’ve earned -- what we deem ours.
And so we build our limited defenses: checkpoints, barbed wire, barricades, and towers.
How long before that “someone” is acknowledged? How many generations must endure
a life that is decidedly less easy – a life not so enriching or secure?
The borders that define us keep on shifting, drifting like a river changing course.
Your tired and poor keep huddling begging entry and straining just to glimpse that fabled torch.