Departures By Beatriz F. Fernandez

A young widow with a single child,

my great-grandmother fled her Bolivian home,

raw gold nuggets sewn in her fringed shawl--

she crossed foothills from Puno to Peru

her daughter clinging to her hand,

and never looked back—from that day on

she was Peruvian and her daughter, too.

My grandmother Maria taught herself English

from foreign papers, practiced on ex-pat Brits

hungry for their native tongue, however mangled

by a mother eager to send her daughters

to the new land she read so much about—

she urged them, get an education, a career,

marry an American, don’t stay here.

Years later, my mother Luisa left Arequipa,

an orphan now, she had no reason to stay--

at twenty her future folded out before her

like an exotic carpet rolled out for display

by eager merchants in a tented bazaar,

and, though she often spoke of Peru with pride,

she became an American, and her daughters, too.

Maybe this explains why airport departure signs

make me crazy to board the first plane out—

my heart’s country flies many flags,

my blood knows how to become something new,

replenish itself and find a new route,

across mountains, or oceans, or space,

but still I linger in my car, bide my time,

watch contrails beckon from the endless blue.