October Reunion

Granny says to park the chairs beneath the fire

-flared maple: six for the living, three for the dead

and no uncle breathing or full of dirt is to set his sorry ass

where Gran-Gran or any other nana should like 

to rest her bones, spread the skirts of her death.

One table on the pavilion: bologna, rolled tubes 

of ham and cheese, cucumber spears and clown nose tomatoes, 

mustard, pickles, Paps on the grill with pink patties and dogs.

Another table under the tree: white bread and soil spread,

bowls of aphids, snuffboxes stuffed with love 

letter ash, charcuterie of cowpit and feldspar. 

Name tags shaped like gravestones for, Granny says, 

"the returning to learn which young'ns to haunt."

And when they come, the dead come with ravens, 

a conspiracy of wingbeats and darkening day,

bottle caps in the preacher's punch, dusk urn-brassy, 

the maple's fire a confusion of ember thickening,  

a tongue turning breath into "Hush." Granny waves

at Uncle Rich, whose Ford Tempo rolled

into the Tennessee, his green brow crowned

with windshield shards and algae streamers, 

at Aunt Roxy and her circlet of smoke, a Pall Mall 

tucked between her teeth. Little Jerome calling 

"No fair!" to the other children playing tag, 

his legs inverted in '88 by a dare and a tractor

and a whole pile's worth of inattention. The uncles

play cornhole, horseshoe, cousins gossip about blanks

on the family tree. The aunts pray for babies in limbo. 

The children play hide-and-seek, the pulsed ones 

diving into bushes, tucking behind trees, learning 

now there's nowhere you can run from the raven's cry; 

the dead pooling into uncles' pockets, swirling in beer bottles.

Of course there's cake: one slice of carrot

for each of the pavilion crowd, the better to know

the sweet of earth. For the maple kin: dark

chocolate swirled with lamb's blood, raw garlic,

the better to remember the bite of air. Come midnight

it's the annual Red Rover farewell: on one side 

the here, on the other side the gone. “Be not afraid. 

We go before you always.” The turned earth,

the fractured dark as they run toward each other. 

How no grip slips, no hold breaks, 

and as the thresholds mingle, the ravens flock 

away, and the youngest, cousin Mabel, 

curled beneath the maple, sleeps.