JUST WORLD: Poems
There Must Be a Gate
Laura Shovan
Where there is a wall
there must be a gate,
a way to enter the garden
on the other side.
Birds need no permission
to migrate overhead.
Moles tunnel the earth
to get through.
For them, brick and concrete
are inconsequential.
Barbed wire,
a human concern.
We must pass through the gap —
if one exists — wingless,
clawless, on the same two feet
that carried us days
and miles to reach this wall.
Identity vouchers
and proof
of public education
are sewn into our pockets.
There must be a gate,
We tell ourselves.
We have seen this wall before.
Laura Shovan is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and a middle grade novelist. Among her award-winning children’s books are The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, Takedown, and A Place at the Table, written with Saadia Faruqi. Laura is a longtime poet-in-the-schools. She teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts. “There Must Be a Gate” first appeared in This Is What America Looks Like: The Washington Writers Publishing House Anthology.
