Richard Blanco

There comes a point in time when we inevitably ask ourselves the question What If?

Here’s a poem by Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968), American poet, public speaker, author and civil engineer.

Blanco is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem "One Today" for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is also the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and at the time the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet.

Maybe
for Craig

Maybe it was the billboards promising
paradise, maybe those fifty-nine miles
with your hand in mine, maybe my sexy
roadster, the top down, maybe the wind
fingering your hair, sun on your thighs
and bare chest, maybe it was just the ride
over the sea split in two by the highway
to Key Largo, or the idea of Key Largo.
Maybe I was finally in the right place
at the right time with the right person.
Maybe there'd finally be a house, a dog
named Chu, a lawn to mow, neighbors,
dinner parties, and you forever obsessed
with crossword puzzles and Carl Young,
reading in the dark by the moonlight,
at my bedside every night. Maybe. Maybe
it was the clouds paused at the horizon,
the blinding fields of golden sawgrass,
the mangrove islands tangled, inseparable
as we might be. Maybe I should've said
something, promised you something,
asked you to stay a while, maybe.
--Richard Blanco

[photo credit: Timothy Greenfield Sanders]