Dust and Broughtonia

And I, wishing to be back in Cuba,

wander a room rich with rocking chairs,

emptiness. Alone on the nightstand,

"The Count of Monte Cristo," bound in leather

and dust. Dust on the window.

I smudge the panes with my right cuff.

And outside, madder crimson Broughtonia

in greenhouses, barbed fences dripping with bougainvillea,

wild flowers by the roadside deeper than dye -

but I think only of Broughtonia,

purple cousins of these displaced, red ones,

purpling only the mountains of Cuba.