Migrations

Moving out, moving on; people do that
in this modern world so regularly, much
unlike earlier societies where townsfolk
and village people, farmers and settlers
stayed where they were born, incurious
about the world beyond their doorsteps,
content to surrender to the comforts of
familiarity, proximity, predictability.

How things have changed, as we have
become experimental and opportunity-
migrants, thinking nothing of leaving
geographic roots, venturing beyond
the familiar toward adventure and life's
disclosure of open secrets, scarcely imagined
whose values we embrace as our lives
become complicated with new aspirations;
old contents and contacts casually left
behind, with no regrets, none whatsoever.

These are the enterprising, confident
migrants, become thus as a personal
imperative, to set out and away, rather
than cling to heritage, culture, and familial
verities. They will succeed at whatever they
try their hands at, minds to, absorbing
other values, verities and social contracts.

Then there are the hordes of human dross,
made so by being thrust asunder from a
place held dear, their lives ransomed for
escape from tyrants, oppression, starvation
and predatory-deadly tribal-incendiary
malice fully aforethought; pillage, massacres.
They represent the sad underbelly of forced
migration, living in sordid camps short of
food, water, medical attention, and hope.

This is the tragedy of the human spirit,
left adrift on a sea of indifference because
the plight of countless numbers cannot be
consciously absorbed and rescue is tardily
delinquent to dire need. This is where
migration stalls in its tracks, where the
effluvium of humanity languish sadly;
unsettled, set aside, a living nuisance.