immigrant hearts

Sometimes, I look through old Life Magazines and see photographs of people putting on tattered coats, holey shoes, and red scarves.

I see them picking up battered suitcases that are taped around the sides to keep in their meager, precious possessions.

I understand they are leaving lives they know and love, migrating in faith and hope, trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, free from violence, disease and extreme poverty. 

I was an immigrant.

 

I migrated to Mali and the people welcomed me into their country.

I promise to welcome, love and care for my immigrant neighbors here, as my Malian neighbors loved and cared for me there.

I wrote this poem to help me look at the human faces of immigration, see the lives of immigrants, and understand my life in their lives, their lives in my life.

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/issue27/trevor_scott_barton1.html

Go now in the name of the immigrant, the human being, the holy stranger. 

Go now to make neighbors out of strangers. 

Go now with an immigrant heart.