Family Tree

Family Tree

They come from far and wide, once a year,

same time, same place to mingle and snack

on catered shrimp and make small talk

in the long line that snakes around the

room to the open bar besieged,

five deep, the convivial beating

heart of the party until the string band

starts up and everyone heads for the

dance floor, long limbs loose, knees high,

hair down, heads thrown back with abandon,

jostling and spilling drinks.  Of course there’s

bound to be trouble, unavoidable

at these kind of things, generations of

farmers and drifters and rail men,

conscripts and schemers and failures

three times over, a profane

cacophony of native brogue and

broken English and long, lazy vowels

stretched to breaking.  The men have my

nose, my forehead, the women your eyes,

your fortitude, but neither you or I

claim the loud cackle coming from a

skinny gal with electric hair or

the flat, vacant gaze of the fellow

in coveralls, hands like hay rakes,

yellow fingers clenched into fists.  The bar

closes at twelve and they start to drift  

away, arms draped, propping each other

up, telling the same old tearful tales,

the falls down wells, battle axes

to the head, starvation in alarming

numbers and the many iterations of

pox and croup, ague and catarrh,

bilious fever, dropsy and the flux,

melancholia, milk leg and screws,

a miserable game of one-upmanship

enjoyed by all as they disappear

into the night, our fore-bearers, eyeing

us at the door, polite yet taciturn,

playing things close to the vest, mum

on the matter of the highest

branches of their family trees.