From the air, the barrier island I live on unfolds like a landing strip.  In the natural areas along US 1, its western trees permanently slant from bearing the brunt of hurricane force winds, and a network of interconnecting sea grapes hover over the sand on the eastern shore, sending down roots and spreading their foliage to make fortresses that hold the beach in place as it is buffeted daily by tides and seasonally battered by storm surges.

In my neighborhood, we’re used to putting up hurricane shutters and hunkering down in our homes while God-knows-what rages outside.  But on a recent Friday morning, we were caught unprepared.

Instinct lifted my eyes from the dishes I was washing in the kitchen sink.  The sun was blazing.  It was shaping up to be yet another 90+ degree day with probable afternoon rain.  But something was already stirring above, a strange storm disturbing the morning.

Roving helicopter wings beat the air.  The windows rumbled.   After an hour of regular beatings, it was the sirens that sent my husband to his cell phone.

What the hell was going on in our corner of paradise?  Had Trump come to roost at Mara Lago?  Shark attack?  Boat explosion?

It was already in the local newsfeed.  A speedboat packed with migrants from Haiti had attempted to enter the inlet.  When a police vessel  intercepted their path, the boat captain rammed it, sped south, and drove the boat ashore. 

Amazed beachgoers watched over a dozen people of all ages drop to the sand and scatter while a helicopter hovered.  Among the arrivals, a couple with a baby and a toddler.  During the flight, someone lost a shoe. 

Over a dozen people with nothing but the shirts on their backs traveled nearly 800 miles in a boat with a capacity for 7 people.  They must have left everything they had behind, risking their lives for an ocean voyage to what they hoped would be the Promised Land. 

But no new colossus stands at the inlets of Florida’s coast.  Lighthouses merely show the way to incarceration. 

When desperation lands on shore, it’s easy to ignore what it’s fleeing from.  It’s easy to forget that most of us have someone in our past who arrived here like that— exhausted, hungry, impovershed, oppressed, or enslaved.

I’m grateful for one of the bystanders the TV crew interviewed.   He and another guy helped one of the migrants struggling in the surf get his footing.  These men give me reason to hope.

-Radiance Writer

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash