Upon Arrival

setting foot upon a
foreign shore, black
clad, starting the
work of taming an
unruly land, resolute, unsparing

the stones dug out for
fences, the land marked
out in acres, trees crowning
mountains, green parapets
in this new Eden of
forbidding landscapes,
jagged jewels yet to
be smoothed

in this ever-expanding
America neon often
lights the way now, in
place of the stars the
pocked the sky, beacons
to a better future, with
bread and land for all,
the story still undone, it
goes on, unstoppable