Boy Migrant
He haunts me
A young boy
Mid teens
A lad like mine
Seen on the news bulletin
Scrambling over razor wire
Raised to protect Fortress Europe
From the migrant tide
From him and his like
But these were children, boys
Far from home, searching for safety
Fleeing from disaster
Alone
Other ghosts have returned
Living skeletons
Toddlers the size of newborns
Eight year olds that look like toddlers
Flies settled on their blank eyes
Pot bellies distended with death
Once more I weep
As the news plays on
Once more I am ashamed
To live in paradise
While the majority suffers
Watching their children die
Or sending them on a perilous journey
I don’t have to send my son away
Across a continent
To avoid death
To avoid being forced to be a soldier
To avoid starvation, disease
To escape that ultimate killer
Poverty
But if I believed that his safety
Is to leave home
Go through immense danger
To reach the promised land
I would surely send my son away
To take that journey
Hope will take you through hell and back
These are children
Those travelling boys need a home
Need mother and father
Need to be children
These children have been surely stripped of it all
I weep for the starving, denied a life
I give money for aid and comfort
Is that aid and comfort to me as well?
Am I a Good Samaritan?
Or just trying to salve a conscience as I continue with my life?
Each night I wake thinking of that boy hiding in the bushes in Hungary
I pray to a God I no longer believe in
Look after that boy, to keep him safe
I want to give him a home
I want to hold him and tell him it’s alright
That we will look after him
I need so much to treat him as my own
We are all family in the end
All human beings on the road
Between birth and an ending
We are each but a moment way
A moments bombing from displacement and death
I feel helpless in the face of an unfolding situation that is inhumane
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Written and posted in response to Peter Notehelfers ‘A Voice for the Voiceless poetry Challenge’.
Written for a boy I saw on the news many months ago and for the starving children in Yemen today.
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