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Virgil Suárez

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Tio HIPOLITO

my mother's great uncle
              who arrives from Cuba,
for a first & last visit to Miami.

We pick him up at the hustle-push
              airport. He is a man
of scarcity, from a land leached

of time. He doesn't know much
              about planes, designer
jeans, CPUs, slurpees.

The minute he climbs in the Volvo
              for our trip home,
he weeps. He doesn't feel well.

He tells us about his dead son,
              at forty-five, still a young man,
who died a year ago

of a massive coronary in the shower.
              We learn all this between sobs.
Not fair, he says, for my son to die before me.

He used to believe in a higher being.
              Miracles. Who can believe
when so much is taken away? Country,

wife, son - nothing is left but
              this man, this angel from paradise
dressed in a cloud-colored overcoat

in 90 degree Miami weather,
              being driven to a strange place,
by a stranger who'd like

to trade eyes for his, what
              he's seen, for the miles his shoes
have traveled, grand beneath them.

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