Safe Homes

My blood runs cold
When this Nation's
Hearts turn off
For My ancestors
came, through blood,
and tears, To this land
Driven by oppressors
Who thought their
cause just, and right
My people fled death,
and fear, To find home
here

They* fled from nation
to nation, to nation
Hunted by those in power
Driven by those who,
Fearing their beliefs,
Killed scores
In righteous violence
While kings and popes,
laughed, and people
Joined songs of praise
celebrating Their deaths
Until welcoming shores
Took them in
Rebuilding lives again
Already built too many times
And families, too often
Broken by other's choices

They† built l'Acadiane,
From the mossy swamps
After half their number
Dead in violent expulsion
Their enemies stole
pastoral homes
Driven by distrust, to hatred
Of who they were
Of how they spoke
Jealous of lands they held
Forced to build new lives
in a cast off land
Far from the forests,
and farms they knew
Those who survived,
fraught sea passages
Were cast in a country
alien to them
Humid, and close
Cypré and cocodrie,
replacing fields and cattle
Where precious furrows
Became swamp choked channels

They‡ crossed the Cumberland Gap
In a land where their
Tartan, Was not taboo
Where their songs
could be sung
Where the ceilidh
Could dance into the night
Where their children,
Could grow, safe from
People that counted them
less than human
For the way they spoke
And the people they
descended from
So fiddle tunes echo
Down hollers
While feet tap out
Reel and fling and jig
Shadows of a far off home
Lost but not forgotten

They§ came on ships
Through storm and sun
to tenement's crowded halls
Where food
beyond potatoes,
Could be their daily bread
Driven by a starvation,
Orchestrated by oppressors
Who robbed their land of food,
Because they judged them
Unworthy of life, and care,
Coming here to work,
In inhumane conditions,
Lungs, clogged
by coal and cotton,
Still better then the
gnawing death, left behind.
Here to pray as they wished
And maybe, someday, rise
From the conditions they found
In dark factories
And ramshackle housing
To homes and lands
With pantries full

They¶ plodded across plains
Driven by those
Whose hate caused murder
Men, women, and children
Killed and maimed by
Leaden balls
Walking away From
cities built, and planned
From houses of their God
In joyful song
To lands, without crops
Without settlement or road
Through mountains and rivers
Across a nation
And into another
Looking only for peace
Longing only to work and live
Without violent assault
Leaving behind graves
As guides to those who
followed them there

I shout
At tiny screens
As my ancestor's blood
Pales in remembered fear
They See it again
But their children
Repeat the old lies
Oppressing those
Who come like them
Seeking home
Fleeing fear, And violence
Wanting peace
Wanting to build,
this Nation's heart
Now divisible
As we spill other's blood
Forgetting
How our spilled blood
Brought us here
To find safe homes.


*The Huguenots
†Cajuns or Acadian French
‡ The Scottish and Scotch Irish
 §The Irish
¶ The Mormon Pioneers