Aunts: By Nicholas Ingalls

 

I like it when my family gathers

Twice a year on Thanksgiving and Christmas

Sitting around a cluttered, shabby block

An aging excuse of a table on

Which sparkling, ceramic slabs overfilled

With darkened meat and mashed potatoes that

Remind me of fluffy snow-covered hills

The thunderous laughter filling little ears

Almost drowning out the piercing clang of forks

 

I like it when one-by-one the table

Clears, waiting for the adult stories and

Jokes. The serious, intellectual talk

Of the older, educated relatives

The physicists, counselors, engineers

It is then when the conversation

That would bore most, yet fills me with a ward

Satisfaction occurs. That is what I miss

Most during the long elapsed time between

Visits. An occurrence short lived as the

Clock strikes each second with a pounding note

An intensity above all else in

A lull of conversation. So intense

Everyone must hear it, because it is then

That each couple, each family decides

It is their time, that time to head for home.

 

I like it at the door, next to those horrid

Dark blue, dust filled couches that must be older

Than everyone there, when powerful hugs

And strong handshakes are given out and the

Last sight of Christmas, is everyone leaving.

 

______________________________________________________

The Aunts

 

By Joyce Stuphen

I like it when they get together

and talk in voices that sound

like apple trees and grape vines,

and some of them wear hats

and go to Arizona in the winter,

and they all like to play cards.

They will always be the ones

who say “It is time to go now,”

even as we linger at the door,

or stand by the waiting cars, they

remember someone—an uncle we

never knew—and sigh, all

of them together, like wind

in the oak trees behind the farm

where they grew up—a place

I remember—especially

the hen house and the soft

clucking that filled the sunlit yard.