MY CUBA.

My grandparents left Cuba in the early sixties;
they never imagined the revolution would last.

After the Cuban missile crisis, they realized
they were cast out of Eden. Decades passed.

At last I went for a visit and found a time warp.
People living in the past, without technology

or the usual stream of new possessions.
Instead, the patched and mended predominated,

nostalgic and dilapidated in the brilliant sun.
Alone, at a café in Havana, surrounded by tourists,

I fought back tears as I listened to a song
my grandparents sang, and it seemed

as if someone I knew might walk in the door.
But no one came. An impossible thought,

like the idea of the life I might have had,
had my grandparents not left. Yet I have grown

at peace with the Cuba they gave me.
I carry their homeland lost and found in my heart.