What is found in mote of dust a float in shaft
of light coming through an abandoned house's
window? A cracked dirty floor, a woman

with her back turned to the door , my grandmother
perhaps, working on the evening's meal, a toad
in the cool, damp spot by there in my grandfather

wiped his mud-caked boots by the door, a machete
blade rusted like this thought of a dying man,
a pistol his hands, the way my mother claims

my father's father went down, or Marti, Cuba's
martyred leader, a man with a weakness for pretty
women and poetry. In the church of bliss, the book

closes itself against the ravages of a crow trapped
in fire. Here is Jesus, man of earth and fire, water
for eyes. In his bosom aches a heart, in his guitar

the history of how a man travels, never coming back
to where he started. My father always claimed he wanted
to be buried back home. How can we all return?

In black dust, a mote sifting free in the fading light.