AN IMMIGRANT’S TALE

It was a wide sea
in those days,
when I was seventeen
and the world was screened off
by sky and clouds,
staying put was the only scenario,
with me on land, grounded,
still in the clothes my mother paid for
and with just a few dollars in my pocket.

I could barely flow with rivers
let alone cruise the jet streams.
There was no clear way
out of my life and into any other.

A rumpled look,
a few friends,
a limited knowledge of sensation,
I really felt my age –
young but preordained.

So how did I ever get here?
From an uncle’s advice
at a backyard cookout
to the other side of the world?
From a warm Christmas with family
to a long December with snow on the ground?

I could give you a list of snap decisions,
coincidences, odd choices, haplessness,
hopelessness, pure luck, and a youthful
preference for romance over responsibility.

But I prefer to end this with…
here I am.

And I can look back.
There’s still a sea out there.
But I see beyond it now.
There’s always another shore.