I'm writing this on October 15, the last day of Hispanic Heritage Month. Unlike similar months that celebrate the various cultures that comprise the United States, this recognition straddles two months, due to the fact that September 15 is Independence Day for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Americans of Latinx heritage have enriched our culture in countless ways, adding to our language, our food, our arts, and, not least, our poetry.   Current Poet Laureate Ada Limón writes of the need for a national anthem that is more inclusive of our entire nation, people and land: "a song where the notes are sung by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains, the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left unpoisoned, that song that's our birthright, that's sung in silence when it's too hard to go on, that sounds like someone's rough fingers weaving into another's, that sounds like a match being lit in an endless cave, the song that says my bones are your bones, and your bones are my bones, and isn't that enough?" "A New National Anthem" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147506/a-new-national-anthem   In "Borderbus," former Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Hererra mixes Spanish and English in a nightmare vision of the perils facing the undocumented trying to reach the US: "A dónde vamos  where are we going Speak in English or the guard is going to come A dónde vamos  where are we going Speak in English or the guard is gonna get us hermana Pero qué hicimos but what did we do Speak in English come on Nomás sé unas pocas palabras I just know a few words… No somos nada y venimos de la nada pero esa nada lo es todo si la nutres de amor por eso venceremos We are nothing and we come from nothing but that nothing is everything, if you feed it with love that is why we will triumph We are everything hermana Because we come from everything" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91751/borderbus   Perhaps answering Limón's call for a more inclusive national song, Richard Blanco, President Obama's second inaugural poet alerts us to the many sounds, noises as well as words, that are perceptible to all, that could help bind us together: "Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom, buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días in the language my mother taught me—in every language spoken into one wind carrying our lives without prejudice, as these words break from my lips." https://poets.org/poem/one-today   Of course, the US is not the same as America, and great poets have come from many other parts of the Americas. José Martí is a Cuban national hero who died fighting to free Cuba from the Spanish. He was also one of the greatest poets of our hemisphere. His poem "Simple Verses" (translated by Anne Fountain) limns the virtues of loyalty, friendship, love of nature and country: "The wounded eagle, I know  Can soar to the bluest skies  While the venomous viper below Chokes on its poison and dies.//  I know that when life must yield  And leave us to restful dreams That alongside the silent field Is the murmur of gentle streams.//  To sorrows and joy, I reply By placing a loyal hand,  On the star that refused to die— Proud symbol of my land." https://poets.org/poem/simple-verses   Similarly, Nicaragua's national poet Rubén Darío, who introduced modernismo into Latin American poetry, brings a Yeatsian voice of prophecy to his poem "Song of Hope" (translator unknown): "Vultures a-wing have sullied the glory of the sky; The winds bear on their pinions the horror of Death's cry; Assassinating one another, men rage and fall and die.// Has Antichrist arisen whom John at Patmos saw? Portents are seen and marvels that fill the world with awe, And Christ's return seems pressing, come to fulfill the Law.// The ancient Earth is pregnant with so profound a smart, The royal dreamer, musing, silent and sad apart, Grieves with the heavy anguish that rends the world's great heart." https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/canto-de-esperanza-with-english-translation/   Finally, Natalie Diaz combines Mojave and Spanish ancestry, about as American as one can be. Using imagery from both of those traditions and mixing it with a dash of surrealism, for Diaz "writing is kind of a way for me to explore why I want things and why I'm afraid of things and why I worry about things. And for me, all of those things represent a kind of hunger that comes with being raised in a place like this." Here she speaks of need and desire, fear and hope, and words of advice from a mother: "My mother said this to me long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,// and what my mother meant by Don't stray was that she knew all about it—the way it feels to need// someone to love you, someone not your kind, someone white, some one some many who live// because so many of mine have not, and further, live on top of those of ours who don't." "They Don't Love You Like I love You" https://poets.org/lesson-plan/teach-poem-they-dont-love-you-i-love-you-natalie-diaz   These few examples barely scratch the surface of the richness and variety of Latinx poets both here and elsewhere in the Americas. Let them be a starting point for your own exploration.