By the time my parents arrived at the prison

 

after the War and with their first son,

the 10-foot barbed wire fence was down,

the towers and corner spotlights gone.

 

The rifle-carrying guards who, around the clock,

 

circled the perimeter on horseback,

had returned to their old day jobs in that

desolate place, not quite Mexico, not quite

 

America, thirty-five miles from the border.

 

When the Alien Enemy Detention Facility closed

 

in the War’s shadow, the school district got most

of it, opening the houses to others

like that young couple and their toddler,

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who arrived from central Texas on a teacher’s pay,

 

probably surprised that he, my father,

was alive—and grateful, having come from nothing,

to be living in what they called The Little House.

 

If I could wish someone well who is in the past,    

                   

I would wish it for them—that at least

for that moment, they know some happiness

in this life, believing, as they must have, inside

 

someone else’s prison, that the worst was over,

and they survived.

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