A starter British passport, now with a French one too, I can vote in both and put down roots in either, and stroll through
eGates and customs checks head high, as one of us, legitimately pukkah, blessed by birth/life/luck, and thus
with paperwork in order should copper or gendarme ask me who on earth I am: I smile and keep my calm
and my right to an annual break upon a sunlit beach where seas digesting some who yearned my paradise to reach
lap peacefully as though the summer days could last as far into the future as they failed to in the past . . .
*****
Tom Vaughan writes: “The older I get, the more I ask myself the question: ‘Where would we be without our (double) standards?’.”
‘One of Us’ was first published in Snakeskin.
Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany. https://tomvaughan.website
On her way to work one morning Down the path ‘longside the lake A tender-hearted woman saw a poor half-frozen snake His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew “Oh well,” she cried, “I’ll take you in and I’ll take care of you” “Take me in, tender woman Take me in, for heaven’s sake Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake
She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk And laid him by thе fireside with some honеy and some milk She hurried home from work that night, and soon as she arrived She found that pretty snake she’d taken in had been revived “Take me in, tender woman Take me in, for heaven’s sake Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake
She clutched him to her bosom, “You’re so beautiful,” she cried “But if I hadn’t brought you in, by now you might have died” She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed and held him tight Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite “Take me in, tender woman Take me in, for heaven’s sake Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake
“I saved you,” cried the woman “And you’ve bitten me, but why? And you know your bite is poisonous and now I’m gonna die” “Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in” “Take me in, tender woman Take me in, for heaven’s sake Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake “Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake “Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake
*****
Donald Trump has repeatedly read this poem in his political rallies as a way of attacking immigrants and the US Government’s immigration policies. The ironies are endless: – that two of Trump’s wives are themselves immigrants (the current one having a very sketchy background as a “model”); – that Trump always fails to credit Oscar Brown Jr as the song’s author, consistently naming Al Wilson instead; – that Oscar Brown was a civil rights activist and for ten years a member of the Communist Party (he left when he decided he was “too black to be red”); – that the song’s message, a variant on one of Aesop’s Fables, is that kindness can be betrayed; – that Oscar Brown’s daughters have sent Trump cease-and-desist letters because Trump’s message is antithetical to all their father stood for; – and as one of the daughters said on CNN, “the elephant in the room is that Trump is the living embodiment of the snake that my father wrote about in that song.“
The red leaves in the sunshine are So red! So red! So red! There are no buried Caesars here – instead, The dispossessed of all the Earth, With native wisdoms, human worth, Bleed through the trees like a reopened scar.
*****
Today is Canadian Thanksgiving; in the US, Columbus Day; in the Bahamas, National Heroes Day; in all of them “aka Indigenous Peoples’ Day”. Yes, we’re all here, across the Atlantic or the Pacific from where we or our ancestors came. Yes, there are things to be thankful for, and things to regret. But that’s the story of modern humans, walking out of Africa for the past 200,000 years, and of earlier versions walking out of Africa for the previous couple of million years.
Reparations for everything done to each other is impossible… will the Italians pay reparations to the British for 300 years of occupation and slavery? (Not that the reparations would be paid to the English, who didn’t show up until after the Romans left; payment would be to the people the English pushed out: the Welsh, Cornish, some Irish and maybe some Scots…) People have been invading and massacring, invading and enslaving, invading and intermarrying, in all parts of the world since forever.
What would be reasonable would be for all governments to grant all citizens good quality universal education and good quality universal health care at least for the first 20 years of life. Reparations to the dead may be impossible, but giving everyone a decent chance going forward would seem appropriate. And it would be in the interests of everyone who would like a healthy, well-educated society in which to live.
Form in Formless Times 