Tomorrow I Leave To El Paso, Texas Poem by Juan Felipe Herrera

see my brother-in-law with a styled shirt
in spite of his cancer below
then a small dinner in the evening the next day
no one knows except I may be on the road
Mesquite where my father settled in '31
forty-five minutes west then a left you go in
sister Sarita waits for me on Abby Street
after decades in separate families we just met
now I hear the clock snap I swipe an ant
time to walk my dogs five blocks and back
a different route to soothe the mind
it is the same one but I am hopeful