MIGRANT YEARS

Author: Philip Kuhn

"The common hero is the hero"

Light frees the bastard night

From migrants in their sentinel sleep,

Hands without guides

To the ready and the yoke for their wages,

Any rough job,

And they wake to the bondage of their freedom

Light cracks the gavel dawn

In the hourglass of transient workers

Who, hand in hand,

Slave for the soul of America

With honest work

And guard what remains of their illusions

Light brings harvest temples

So many mornings with carnival heat

For harder hands,

Creased and gnarled at the jobs workers tend to

Across this land,

Yet they carry on without question

Light floods the working ways

Spread over hours with manual labor,

Hand over hand,

To build and plant and caretake, gather and fix,

Resurrection

Again, then again under the fortress sun

Philip Kuhn is a poet, editor and teacher. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Florida Quarterly, Calliope, and elsewhere. One of them was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the editor of A Dream Goes on Forever, Vol. 2, The Utopia Years, a rock-and-roll biography, and others. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and now lives in Wilson, NC.