Dinah Forever by Claudia Mills

Author:Claudia Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Eight

Mrs. Briscoe was right, as usual. The more Dinah read about immigration policy, the more interesting it became. Right away, Dinah felt herself in sympathy with the negative—that the government should welcome immigration, not restrict it. After all, the United States was a nation of immigrants. If poor people desperate for a way out of poverty or oppression couldn’t come to America, where could they go? The challenge was to make herself come up with powerful arguments for the other side. Though whether or not they were able to immigrate to the United States, everybody in the world was going to die in the end, anyway.

Dinah wrote a poem on the topic for Ms. Dunne. It was called “A Few Thoughts on Immigration Policy”:

The Haitian refugees who wait for asylum may get it; but they will still die.

The undocumented Mexican workers who cross the border into Texas may find jobs, but they will still die.

The Vietnamese immigrants who own the corner convenience store, and the Korean immigrants who work in the filling station, and the Taiwanese immigrants who work at the pharmacy will all die.

The tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free—all will die someday, whatever it says on the Statue of Liberty.

Illegal aliens, legal aliens, United States citizens—all will die.

Everybody will die.

Dinah read it over, pleased. From the title through to the last line, it was her best poem to date.

Dinah had been writing a lot of haiku, too. Ms. Dunne adored haiku. Haiku was a Japanese style of nature poetry. A haiku was very short, just three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Dinah would find herself in the middle of doing something else, and then the idea for a haiku would just come to her, like a special, sudden, unexpected gift. Once she had the idea, it was a lot of work to make all the syllables come out right, but it was a wonderful kind of work—like solving an extremely challenging and complicated puzzle that turned out to be a tiny seventeen-syllable treasure.

One golden leaf falls

From the maple in my yard—

Soon all leaves will die.

In the evenings now

There is just a hint of frost—

Icy death to come.

Birds are flying south.

Don’t they know that death can come

To the south as well?

At least Dinah could still write poetry. She was grateful for that.

* * *

Nick was busy with his campaign. At Dinah’s suggestion, he had decided to base his candidacy on environmental issues. His campaign slogan was “Nick Tribble: The Next Step.” The idea was that Blaine’s recycling program was the first step, and the great environmental programs that Nick would launch would be the next step. All Nick’s posters were green, to carry out the environmental theme.

Dinah helped Nick make the posters on Sunday evening. She helped him think of catchy things to write on them, like: “Save more trees? Vote Tribble, please!” and “Even WORMS know where it’s at: Vote Tribble!” The

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