{"id":5857,"date":"2026-09-07T09:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T09:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5857"},"modified":"2026-09-07T09:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T09:38:07","slug":"a-young-immigrants-poem-to-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=5857","title":{"rendered":"A Young Immigrant\u2019s Poem to America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In the late 1960s, a boy left Havana in the middle of the night, and days later, he was standing on Merritt Island, Florida.<\/p>

Read more Does Volkswagen have a Future?<\/a><\/p>\n

I was that boy.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know anything about American exceptionalism, about the great argument over liberty and government.\u00a0\u00a0I knew I had come to America, and almost immediately America began showing me things I had never seen: a new bicycle, chewing gum, Superman comics newer than 1960, ordinary pleasures that felt like evidence of a larger freedom.<\/p>\n

And there were rockets.\u00a0\u00a0They rose almost every night.\u00a0\u00a0I didn\u2019t understand the science.\u00a0\u00a0I only knew something extraordinary was happening, and that the future had been waiting for my arrival before roaring across Merritt Island on columns of fire.<\/p>\n

For thousands of years, the world was an old place.\u00a0\u00a0Human beings walked, rode animals, sailed with the wind, cooked with fire, and lit the darkness with candles.\u00a0\u00a0Civilizations rose and fell, but the basic human experience remained stubbornly familiar.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1776, the world roared.<\/p>\n

America was where the Age of Discovery, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment became a living experiment.\u00a0\u00a0And with America came a question that changed the human condition: What if?<\/p>\n

What if the old limits were not limits at all?\u00a0\u00a0What if a human being were free to wonder, experiment, invent, fail, and try again?\u00a0\u00a0What if a person could look at the world as it was and imagine it as it could be?<\/p>\n

America didn\u2019t invent curiosity.\u00a0\u00a0It created a place where curiosity could run.\u00a0\u00a0A thought became an experiment, an experiment became an invention, an invention became an industry that transformed the lives of millions.\u00a0\u00a0Someone looked at darkness and asked, What if we could make our own light?<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Someone looked at distance and asked, What if a message could travel faster than a horse?<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Someone looked at the sky and asked, What if human beings could fly?<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0And someone looked at the Moon and asked the question waiting for humanity since the beginning: What if we could go there?<\/em><\/p>\n

America kept answering with action.<\/p>\n

Yes, let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s try.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s build it.<\/p>\n

And when we fail, let\u2019s try again.<\/p>\n

That is how a nation changes the world \u2014 not by declaring itself exceptional, but by doing exceptional things.\u00a0\u00a0America earned her exceptionalism in laboratories and machine shops, on farms and factory floors, in universities and garages, through inventors, engineers, and dreamers who refused to accept that yesterday had the final word.<\/p>\n

She earned it with immigrants, too.\u00a0\u00a0People who came carrying little more than hope, talent, and a willingness to work.\u00a0\u00a0They did not diminish America by coming here.\u00a0\u00a0They became part of the engine.<\/p>\n

I landed on Merritt Island at the exact moment America was doing something no civilization had ever done: leaving the planet.\u00a0\u00a0A boy arrives from the Caribbean, and within sight of where he is living, Americans are building machines to carry human beings into space.\u00a0\u00a0He doesn\u2019t understand what he\u2019s seeing.\u00a0\u00a0How could he?\u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s a kid.\u00a0\u00a0But a child feels something before he has the words for it.<\/p>\n

That instinct didn\u2019t begin with the space program.\u00a0\u00a0America had been asking What if?<\/em> since its founding.\u00a0\u00a0What if ordinary people could govern themselves?\u00a0\u00a0What if a person could own the fruits of his labor?\u00a0\u00a0What if an immigrant could become an American?\u00a0\u00a0What if a child born without wealth could rise by talent and determination alone?<\/p>\n

Those questions built a culture that produced results, and fast.\u00a0\u00a0Two hundred years, that\u2019s all, from a fragile declaration by thirteen colonies to human beings standing on the Moon; from a world powered by muscle, wind, and fire to one powered by electricity, engines, and information.\u00a0\u00a0The human race had waited thousands of years for that acceleration, and America stepped on the gas.<\/p>

Read more California Still Needs Prop 39<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps that is why the shining city on a hill resonates so deeply.\u00a0\u00a0Not because America was perfect, but because it was visible: a place where a human being could arrive with nothing and still possess a chance.\u00a0\u00a0A place where the son of a Cuban exile could stand on Merritt Island and watch his new country reach for the Moon, thinking, \u201cI can do that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is what I see when I look back at the country I entered as a boy: not perfection, but possibility; not a flawless record, but one that kept getting back up.\u00a0\u00a0Generations built what they were never simply handed.<\/p>\n

The older I get, the more I understand what a gift that was.\u00a0\u00a0That is why I keep coming back to those two words.\u00a0\u00a0What if we can?\u00a0\u00a0What if we try?\u00a0\u00a0What if the next great discovery is still waiting, and somewhere tonight a child is looking upward, wondering whether human beings can someday go farther than the Moon?<\/p>\n

Maybe she will.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe the next great inventor is already sitting in a classroom, already taking something apart just to see how it works, already staring at the stars.<\/p>\n

That is America: not finished, not satisfied, still reaching for something further out.\u00a0\u00a0And God, I hope we never stop.<\/p>\n

I know something now I could never have known then.\u00a0\u00a0That boy did not simply arrive in America.\u00a0\u00a0America arrived in him: the freedom, the possibility, the audacity to believe tomorrow could be better than today.<\/p>\n

So yes, I believe that America is exceptional.\u00a0\u00a0Not because someone told me to, but because I can look at the evidence: where humanity began, what Americans built, the Moon, and the boy who came from Havana to stand beneath those rockets.\u00a0\u00a0We did this.\u00a0\u00a0We earned it.\u00a0\u00a0And I am damn proud to have become an American.<\/p>\n

But I am not that boy anymore.\u00a0\u00a0The rockets stopped rising over my childhood decades ago, and I never did make it to the Moon myself.\u00a0\u00a0I became something more ordinary: a man who grew old on the soil his parents fled toward, who watched the country keep its promise even when it was inconvenient, even when the headlines said otherwise.<\/p>\n

And now the ledger runs the other way.\u00a0\u00a0My children were born on this soil.\u00a0\u00a0Their children, and their children\u2019s children, will be born on it, too.\u00a0\u00a0The generation that gave up everything so the rest of us could be free is buried in it.\u00a0\u00a0That is not a small inheritance.\u00a0\u00a0That is the whole point.<\/p>\n

So I have told my sons, more times than either of them cares to count, that the American Dream is not a myth handed down at graduation ceremonies.\u00a0\u00a0It is still there, waiting to be seized, provided a man is willing to work for it.<\/p>

Read more Democrats want to build a passenger train\u2013in Texas?!<\/a><\/p>\n

Maybe, I tell them, you could go to the Moon.<\/p>\n

\n

\"<p><em>ImageRaw Pixel.” class=”wp-image-1295″ width=”640″ height=”439″ \/><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Image via Raw Pixel.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the late 1960s, a boy left Havana in the middle of the night, and days later, he was standing on Merritt Island, Florida. Read more Does Volkswagen have a Future? I was that boy. 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