Hughes Family Reunion

Southern Illinois in sweltering and wet summer. 
Thunder and the whippoorwill sing strange 
duets at night. 
From southwestern deserts to the closest 
farmhouse, we gather. 

We are many kinds of people around this common name: 
the girls’ team and the boys’ team playing 
tug-o-war over a mud puddle; 
the sister come to say all is forgiven; 
the grandfather bent with pain; 
parents of just-married children; 
parents newly single, grieving or, sometimes, walking taller in a
                  new-found freedom; 
the loudly ill, the fanatically well, and 
the serene. 

And there is food, 
brought from ordered kitchens, or fashioned on cluttered 
                  counters with 
pride and love; 
fresh-snapped beans; sturdy ears of corn; 
beef, carrots and potatoes in gravied, peppery stews; 
bread, basic as life and love; 
mounds of chicken, fried — what other way? — and 
pies with airy crusts and juicy fillings; 
and milk, fresh and foamy. 

It’s all mine, this reunion: 
Grandma’s advice, the cry of my days-old cousin. 
I bring gifts of cactus jelly and take home 
cake and an old hymn relearned. 
I come here, weep and sing, small-talk and rhapsodize, 
until in dreams I drink a cool, sweet blend of 
country strength and city change that 
is my truest heirloom.