In this moving poem, Maryknoll Lay Missioner Rick Dixon follows one migrant’s trail to its tragic end, a grave marker in a potter’s field.
and one more time it opens only to darkness.
There are shadows lying across the land,
but she knows the desert has two faces,
the terror of death and the treasures of life.
A migrant’s trail, where a smile is a jewel,
a meal a miracle, a safe place to sleep, heaven on earth.
Yes, the desert has two faces, she’s seen them both.
The terror of death and the treasures of life.
She knows all too well the trail of cruelty,
and the trail of love,
and where moments of kindness can turn into a last instant.
I wonder if she drowned in the irrigation canal.
Only “Jane Doe” and a row number mark the red brick of her pauper’s grave.
A privacy fence stretching hundreds of yards posts NO TRESPASSING,
where for uncounted migrants, death hits a wall.
Yet it is strewn with flowers, some fresh and alive,
others wilted and dead.
It does something to you, weeping at the edge of this field.
In sackcloth, you cross over a deep sadness, a loneliness, to a gentle presence:
God the Great Solitaire.
And from our first moment to our last instant,
the desert closes us down and breaks us open
to the terror of death and the treasures of life.
Featured image: Dusk falls on Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, where a 14-member volunteer team made up mostly of Jesuit seminarians and priests carried out a search and rescue mission Dec. 20-22, 2024, to look for missing or dead migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. OSV News/Courtesy of Luke Taylor)
