Bill Prindle
Instead of a Wall
Let us build a road a four-lane maybe
A killer strip that uses our insatiability
Itself to crush those who would cross
Let us call it El Camino de San Francisco
Xavier Cabrini saint of the immigrant
The one who blesses the crossings
Let us ply that road in our conveyances
Four wheelers sixteen wheelers bicycles
Sandals dog carts sorted by sheer size
Let us witness the Salvadorenos the Ticos
The Zapotec Toltec Maya Mulatto piling up
Beside the unlucky bucks possums raccoons
Let us travel all the way west to the Pacific
Peaceable sea where Asiatic refuse washes up
Among driftwood, surfboard, bronze blondes
Let us after all these miles finally stand still
Remembering the beautiful minds vanishing
Light enduring beneath these merciless wheels
Bill Prindle is a Charlottesville poet whose work has appeared in the Tupelo Press anthology Thirty Days, the Echo World magazine, the journal Written River, and the Pennsylvania Review. He has won awards from the Poetry Society of Virginia, and is active in Charlottesville’s Live Poets Society.