UC Riverside Poem

*UC-Riverside*

Each year, more immigrants voyage to California than any other state in America.
Many of them sail through boundaries so that their children can cross Riverside.
People who believe that borders between unity should be crossed until they’re crossed out.
So that diversity may continue to attend spaces like UCR, where every year begins with
Relicts from every continent forming a Block Party. Where throughout the year at The Barn,
You can find sons and grandsons of farmers from generations and countries apart sharing the same common wealth of this cultivated land. A land with such opportunity, that many first-generation Americans can prove to their living ancestors back home,
That it is greener on the other side,
From the payouts awarded from their parents’ hard work.
UCR is a family that looks in the mirror and sees the ever-changing face of these United States.
It holds the words passed down hundreds of years from men and women across nations who have bled and even died in the attempt to live the dream that today these Highlanders croon when awakened to.
Youth that sings the immigrant’s song which carries to a new family. A family devoted to research. Members who work through dusk to migrate breaks from the Box Spring Mountains:
Developing cancer treatments through DNA Repair,
Devising ecological strategies to sustain ecosystems in changing climates,
Utilizing patterns of data to predict earthquakes and their impacts,
And protecting the quality of water, so when travelers come upon it,
They will know that it is safe.
Highlanders from many backgrounds are found about, many who are doing what their parents and grandparents before them couldn’t. Not because they weren’t capable, they just weren’t able.
These Highlanders have made it to the Riverside, yet continue to cross boundaries their families haven’t seen. Highlanders whose parents vowed that their children would live a better life with perseverance and a potential that they, too, had—but never got to live. Now they’re alive, many in the sky,
Watching their children become Highlanders,
&
Living—Their Promise.

From Alma Mater Vol. 3: The West
You can read the full four-volume Alma Mater collection here.
©2016. Original Clyde Aidoo. All rights reserved