Poetry: Crossing Rio Grande

{First published in the Jan. 15, 2020 print issue of Christian Century}

Crossing Rio Grande

No time for modesty when they say

take off your clothes. And here

you dress in the dark, keep eyes

closed making love with your wife.

Every stitch, they say, even the pregnant ones,

even kids. Other side, tack-cloth jeans

shimmied over wet skin faster than a glance.

No tell-tale river trail. This

land full of promise, promise, and naked

you enter. Your life of merit just hen-scratch

in the sand. No longer straight As,

boyhood entrepreneur, leader, niño. From here,

you build on this crime, on chaos and concealment

of your sad, inevitable gift. What can they even know

of such dignity, the reaching and pulling,

the leaping into air as thin as bliss?

What do they see of love’s wild resolve

or the looping, malignant chain of need?