My rambling...

Beyond history books or the letters on this page, my first time in another country has become more than a memory, it’s now half of my life.

Crossing its borders it did show me the promise of change I sure wanted to live by, but also more than I realized. The first time I traveled -or crossed- over the 30 mile limits of the Mexican border no words were necessary, just glances and wild thoughts running along the center lines on the highway (to describe what I couldn’t back then).

Inside the bus, I passed things I had only seen in pictures or movies and although the land I was traveling in, at some point belonged to me, to México, I felt out of place. However, and my face showed how small my world was before I came to its amusements.

Since then, I’ve learned more about its past and its urgencies for the future, war, rules and love of traffic signs; and since then, I have been scribbling notes and awkward verses.

Setting aside the political slogan, I believe that both halves of my life, have truly become one and that leaving and finding a home have made me more mindful.

I guess I am glad to have crossed what then didn’t seem would later turn (from twenty four years earlier) into today. This land, USA, looks different, spread out, more beautiful, wild and aware; and although its people are a community of silent members, it has and will always have my whatever will happen today and tomorrow and the breath of those whom I love the most.

The other land, Mexico, first and foremost has my imprints on this world, my welcoming into it by my wonderful parents, my first poem, kiss and love.

I don’t know which of the two or if a third one will have the end of it all, but I will be glad on that trip,..hopefuly a Cuban one.

Fidel Guerra Cuevas.
Springfield, Oregón
March, 2017.