Walls standing between

Free, reborn, phoenixes rising
pot-bellied pensioners, in new boots and gaiters,
walking round, up and down, tree-covered hills
along below deep dales, rivers and rills,
bumbling in babbly bubbly burn bottoms,
morning till evening, splishing and splashing,
no matter it's snowing or rain is downlashing,
trudging through sludgy, fudgy-brown smudgy
freshly ploughed farm fields and boggy burnsides,
following found footpaths and fingerboard signs,
climbing up over gates, fences and stiles
(some barbarically barbed-wire-wrapped
by loathsome landowners like they've laid a trap)
and black Pennine dry-stone walls standing between
where they are now and where they want to be.
 
Five flight hours away, the Middle East,
millions of people, many bootless and shoeless,
whole families, grandparents, parents and children,
deserting their countries in dire desperation,
fleeing dictatorship, famine and war,
walking round, up and down, snow-covered mountains,
across arid deserts, braving sand-storms,
hungry and thirsty, in fear for their lives,
dry-parched in summer, bone-chilled in winter,
seeking sure safety in succouring states -
no footpath fingerboard signs show the way -
many escaping in small boats and pontoons
(some barbarically murdered en route
and or stripped of life-savings by criminal groups)
sea waves as tall as walls standing between
where they are now and where they want to be -
 
In a country with freedom to think for themselves,
freedom to roam and live in their homes,
free from dictatorship, famine and war -
 
But we put them in camps, looking like prisons,
denying them freedom - walls standing between
where they are now and where they want to be,
and threaten to send them back home!
 
@ rowland paul hill 27 September 2017