BORDERS

The farmers daren’t harvest their fields for fear of finding bodies,

 dying children in their corn

but weep into their pillows at night instead.

Be a reporter and your windows

 may get smashed, tyres slashed,

vilified on-line

in the age-long eruptions 

over race and place.

Is it 1940 once again?

Others, dredge out nameless remains

from the sea-shore

and from the mountain passes;

babies bottles, shoes, wallets, raincoats

mingled with bones.

Yet others, open their doors and hearts.

Bury the dead. Protest. Crowd-fund. 

Good guys, bad guys, life by life

 - and those who sit on the fences inbetween.  Go-betweens, literally.

Flash points where conflicts begin, tuggings of war and vested interests:

invasions, evictions, runnings from or to.

Territorial demarcations of mine or yours

where we meet, separate, dispute.

Afterall, it began as squatters claims

sanctified by time to holy rights. Rites.

And the cost of blood, birth, soil.