My Family Is Everywhere

My family is everywhere like wild seeds sown On the whim and bluster of a wind Some left for Cuba before the revolution Bring green stalks of sweet grass to sugar And are still there, root sunken in the earth Grafted branches without memory now Or recognition of ancestral home, Separated by language and new history Thick as the depth of our watery boundaries. Some in Panama built the canal, but no bridge For home when their meagre cents were spent Too soon. I met a few with little knowledge But no anxiety for early morning mist of blue Over the mountain, looking still to see them Coming home like birds when summer is done. Some went to Venezuela to see the oil They said was black as Africa in the new world Brazil: there football is more than economy Gladiators: bloodless troubadors of the new army And many drifted into the squalor of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, searching for light Amidst old civilizations brought to ruins By Conquistadores majesty and Roman might. The only one who report are those from Canada Is it because of the language, because they proper As they do in America. Is there nothing in them That longs for home, to leave the Mexico to her Aztecs Her cactus lace with golden strands of sun. When I was in Germany, Austria, France, far away As Holland, Rhine and Danube linking invisble Heritage, I met them, distancing the old decay "We are thinking to move to Taiwan or Japan" They told me, poverty does make a barren land So I understand the boat people, not lying Like Columbus, they seek the same treasure And yet for their truth reap some displeasure. I could package it for them to sell, but cannot agree When the wind rattle the wattle of desolation. My family is everywhere scattered like wild seeds In fresh forests fretting with the burden of the wind.