John Hines Poetry

Everyday I sit with poor clients
They seek food and medical help
What the poor need
The woman today brought two small boys
Soft-breeze silent
Who let their mother do her work with me
We were filling out passport forms
Her husband is a prisoner
Caught driving without a license
She expects his deportation
She cannot make it alone as a single parent
She will return to Guatemala
With the boys with passports in tow
I filled out the forms
I watched her thinking of you
To tell you this has occurred
I ask you to see this with your heart
Because neither you nor I
Can understand


  Madre Soltera

Awakens at five
Awakens her girls – five and two
For her day
Without her husband – deported
She will pick peppers in the sun
She goes it alone
Lost orphan rugged terrain

Today is Memorial Day
Think of Antietam
The Cornfield’s orgy of death
In three hours 10,000 dead
Walk the cornrows
You cannot but feel
The unburied dead
Longing for lost love
In the darkness of memory
Forgotten dead forgotten war
Yet at Antietam
These spirits will seep through your soul
Longing for life unlived

Young women – mothers without partners
Long for the grace of a good man
To re--father their children
To escape the shards of a broken family
Drunk husbands arrested deported re—married

Dark depths of her sadness
Failed lover companion partner
She sweeps other people’s rooms
She cuts other people’s lawns
She paints other people’s houses
To pay the rent to feed the kids

Matchmaker
Hover over the wakeful turnings of her night
Bring her where
Young men with unfinished lives abound
Walk the cornrows with hearts alive

Usurp longing
Create weddings
Madres Solteras
With spirits of the unburied dead
Untoward idea

Yet every day they come
Pleading
For food stamps for Medicaid
For one who cares

Every Day

From Colombia he presented himself and his wife as peasants. He wore a typical straw hat, walked fumble footed, but carried the astuteness of an immigrant who had lived here for many years.

A confident single mom, with three children one of them a Marine, manages a local Mexican restaurant.

A son supports this Cuban couple, mid-60s. She brusque in her presentation.

This tall large, a 300 pounder, buxom lady from Haiti smiles sunbeams as her infant sleeps soft on her full breasts.

She and her husband entered this country to work his whole married life. He paid Social Security as an illegal. After many years he won Permanent Residency, but too late. He died before she was eligible to collect. In her old age she has nothing.

A single mother has three kids, the last a slow-performing autistic. With him, life is difficult for her. She wishes she had stopped with two.

Tiny, third trimester pregnant, she doesn’t show. With no papers, she will receive emergency Medicaid.

A woman in her 30s on her fourth day here from Guatemala wears the ugly ankle bracelet mechanism that keeps her prisoner-of-the-state. She seeks medical help.

A madre soltera, with two young girls, cleans houses as an employee of another immigrant, a tough woman. For $10 an hour She must clean a formidable three houses in six hours.

A Cuban couple here for 24 years has lost their username and password.

A woman whose family earns $3500 a week seeks the medical help she will not find from us.

A woman from Honduras shows a dark sad face.

An older woman from Cuba seeks medical help for her mature son with liver disease. She needs an expensive specialist to prove his disability, but they cannot pay this expensive doctor.

A fire in the trailer, everything destroyed for four kids, three adults. They receive $1400 from the Red Cross. In an eyeblink this evaporates into the costs of hotel rooms and food. Yet they must continue to live, continue to pay $850 for the trailer rent, burned as it is. They cannot afford the $4000 rent of another trailer. He sets up a corner room safe from the rain, where they live.

A woman in her young 40s seeks asylum, but it seems without good reason. She says her ex-husband has scratched her back with scissors, but there are no scars. She says he has threatened to kill her, but there are no witnesses. She says he has threatened to kidnap the children, but they are living here safe with her. She is drawn by her sister, living here, to the American life. I wonder, I wonder, will the judge accept her lawyer’s reasons?

Writing, May 10, 2018

It is 1950. A high school boy, tall, medium build, hitchhikes from Philadelphia to Miami. He will visit his little sister and his mother divorced from his father. He has been traveling about 20 hours when he finds himself in the middle of rural South Carolina at 3 o’clock in the morning. Many rides have carried him to barking dogs hidden in total darkness. In their growl cars pass with less and less frequency. When he sees a car, he sticks out his hand, it passes. He cannot be discouraged. He cannot be afraid in this utter loneliness. He has committed himself to the quest. Without money, you, anyone, he, can travel the highway from point to point. Just ask. It’s dark, he hasn’t slept, but he must keep going. At last a lady stops, a drinker, but he must take the ride. She had seen him hours ago back up the road. She didn’t trust him then, but now his intent to get down the road is obvious. He won’t attack her. ­­She offers a ride to---woman, yet he stays. Eventually south of Tampa she drops him off. From there­­­ he hitchhikes the Tamiami Trail. An old Seminole Indian in a near-wreck car offers him a ride halfway across. (If only now he had accepted that ride! What he might have learned!) The boy refuses him. Instead he finds a long-haul tractor-trailer to carry him over. About 38 hours after leaving Philadelphia he arrives at his mother’s home.

This story has become a touchstone of his remote past, a lens through which he sees his present. It is 2018. Every day he sits at the Guatemala center registering the undocumented, writing applications for food stamps and Medicaid, listening to stories of women crossing the desert or swimming the river. He lives in South Florida where the claptrap of wealth rattles against the empty food tins of the poor. In 1950 the road was safe for a decently dressed young white kid. In 2018 the road, no longer safe, is planted with mines. A white kid couldn’t make that trip today, neither could a brown kid. A black kid wouldn’t dare. Every day at the Center he registers movement. Refugees walk ride fly over the paths of this earth, Central Americans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Chileans, Argentinans, and more, Bangladeshis, Rohingyas, Serbians, Iraqis. All of them following paths darker than he ever knew.

The providence, or good luck or good grace, that guided him home in 1950 is no longer present. Peril, threat, violence set the present tone. Everyday he hears: murdered in Guatemala; deported to Salvador; we have five kids; we have four kids; we have two kids. Wives try to weave the complications of America into a family life. While the kids, American-born, live as secure as any other citizen, their undocumented mother moves through the streets not to be noticed. She won’t dare the modern equivalent of hitchhike.

With an open trusting confident attitude the kid in 1950 commits himself to the road. Why? Even then a 15 year old’s solitary trip from Philadelphia to Miami was mad, crazy, insane. Why then did he go? Think of this. Wherever he lives he’s a lonely kid. His parents are divorced. His little sister whom he dearly loves lives apart. When he puts out his thumb in Philadelphia to start the trek, he chooses heart space. This is not a reasonable rational logical measurable space. It is the place of the heart. He is going home to his mother and sister. He is not thinking about details. Irrationality carries him to rural South Carolina at 3 o’clock in the morning. It carries him into the car of a drinking driver. His effort is mad but he keeps going on. His heart drives him through this space. This is not rational!

This is not rational! Apply this to immigrants. Nothing more than their hearts invite them here. They ride the Beast, they swim the river, they walk the desert. They are not welcome. They face the frightening guns of the border patrol yet they come. Their hearts drive them out of the violence of Honduras, Salvador, Mexico, to come here to the US, to this place that doesn’t want them. This is irrational! At last when they arrive swimming in irrationality they act rationally. They send their kids to schools. They find jobs cleaning houses, fixing cars, ironing shirts. They act as human beings. They love they suffer they go on. They value the common good. They value human life. They put their thumbs out. They enter heart space.

Heart space where the urgent desires of the young boy without money drive him across peril to find his little sister. Heart space where the desperate need of the poor in climates of violence drives them to find a better place. The imagination, the construction of the way it might be, guides the boy, guides the immigrant. When they move into heart space they make the unreal real. Sometimes a hitchhiker’s rides connects him to a different reality. Sometimes an immigrant’s crossing brings him to a different reality. Heart space enables the mad gamble.­­

A prisoner's words Pinioned to hope 

Eagles come to soar this mountain air
You dream whole wings

You cannot be who they are

Haunting Phrase Unknown friend little bird When fear rides in on frigid winds When ego pushes its arrogant lies When power pleads for needy wars Frightened I seek you I seek to hide Beneath the shadow of your wings Who would believe me? Mother-bird wings? A shelter from fear When thugs are flashing guns? Hollow bones cartilage feather A harbor from ego When ego builds the world? Chickadee wings! An image against power When only the powerful rule? What foolish madness To follow an old psalmist’s Metaphor – mother-bird’s Endearing sanctuary – her Least wings to guard a soul I say follow – more than follow Obey bow to the counsel Of the great poet’s heart In those ancient words Spirit hints at presence Absurd outrageous Pearl of beauty Worthy of all my love   Wherever you are today – fear – the blanket It steals your hope lines your face chills your soul This blanket will not warm Listen to the song of the bewildered The cry of the child-miner alone breaking rock The cry of the child-soldier alone with his AK The cry of the child-abused alone with the heft of her father The bewildered chant Fear hovers – a scorpion on the walls of the hut It howls through the night on the cold bench It lingers beside the road waiting to explode It is a trifle – the burnt-up match beside the blaze You cannot quench cold heat In your fear pray Chant a prayer out of your lonely soul Chant though no one listen Chant as if the gods could hear As if they could take the tumor from the child’s brain As if the little girl would not be raped As if the priest stop preying on boys Chant Allahu Akbar with the muezzin Chant Rama RamaRama with the falling Gandhi Chant with the rabbi – chant with the monk No one hears Acid savages the women’s faces Boy-soldiers decimate boy-soldiers The poor die by accurate bombs Chant to change this world you cannot Chant that the corrupt see that the thief ceases Chant for the impossible chant for human goodness Pray for wholeness Pray for healing Hope the impossible When the dark stranger approaches Out of solitude out of loneliness out of no-one-cares Cry Sing your fear Shout – you must Though No One hears Fear is a game of mumbly-peg You are the loser Alone chewing the peg Alone on the street Alone at MacDonalds Alone dreaming Alone drowning Alone falling from the tower Alone singing the blues Alone resisting Alone marching Alone naked Alone threatened Alone in the hole Alone After rape after a mugging after the bomb falls Alone praying What difference do you make? You cry your fear Who hears you Who listens Who will help? Where do the prayers of the lonely go? Where the cry of the poor the plea of the sick? Where the prayer of the fearful? Who listens? Who is the Deaf One who will not hear? Who owns this emptiness? Crybaby! Cry baby Cry Crawl out of your fear Scratch your way Scrape by on fingernails It’s up to you Two Women Poverty calls Invites these young mothers To apply for food stamps and Medicaid In your interview with them An unexpected intimacy threads through A banal task Are you alone? Are you pregnant? Are you connected? Yesterday two women Central Americans Different as a difficult fall a quiet springtime One a 27-year-old mother of five Her beauty tattooed as a sea-worked sailor Sits with the three-year-old daughter Who leans into her with an angered affection She carries a sad aura cool as a dark rain Behind her a younger mother With two boys five and three Shining like polished childhood This classical 21-year-old Latin beauty Enters with gracious wonder Smiles open as the sun Who are these women With their awkward pedigree? Two mothers in their 20s Seven children among them Bred by five fathers Awaiting an unknown tomorrow Walking Words Who are we Who want a home? Grown in Mayan green hills Our foreheads sweat Under loads of oranges We have walked a thousand miles to nest Our small voices In the shadows of hope But without an education like yours We seem empty holes In your wall of words Hear us Pay attention We do not threaten