A Thought & A Poem on Obama's Cuba Policy

I read an interesting Reuters article on "mellowing" attitudes of Miami's Cuban community to President Obama and his recent overture to Cuba.

It's about what you would expect from a Reuters article although I liked this quote from a "diehard" by the name of Ninoska Perez who said, "Please, an American tourist in a Hawaii shirt with a mojito in his hand is not going to change Cuba."

I liked that.

A couple of weeks ago a poet named Richard Cambridge read a poem at the Cantab Lounge extoling the "new beginning" the Obama Administration is seeking with Cuba. Here is my reply which I intend to read tomorrow if Richard is present. It is called Going There From Here. It is dedicated to Adolfo Fernandez Sainz, a Cuban journalist serving a 15-year prison sentence for possessing a typewriter:

A teenager wears a Che Guevara t-shirt
A rebel without a clue
Our President seeks a new beginning
When Fidel says there can be no end
A middle aged man with a ponytail
Extols the island’s one hundred per cent literacy rate
So why are people afraid to go to the library
And check out the wrong books
Vigilant neighbors greet them with suspicious looks

You can speak of our brother’s seed
Our sister’s fruit and being part
Of the family of man
Trying telling that to some poor schmuck
Sitting in a 4x8 cell for the past five years
With ten to go for owning a typewriter
That could have been part of an exhibit
At any library or museum in America
Oh how revolutionary

It isn’t a question of embracing what we fear
It is a question of Fidel unwilling to go there from here