Within the line “All of us as vital as the one light we move through,” I would change ‘vital’ to ‘meaningful.’ The word ‘vital’ fits a physiological topic better than the genre of this poem, while ‘meaningful’ includes the emotions and feelings expressed later in the poem. ”In the line “as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane,” I would change the word ‘cutting’ to ‘cleaving’ to greatly emphasize the work the father is doing “so [the author’s] brother and [the author] could have books and shoes,” as harvesting sugarcane is more difficult than how Richard Blanco described it. Next, I would change ‘mingled’ to ‘interlaced’ in the line “The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains mingled by one wind–our breath,” being that the word ‘mingle’
