James McKean
REUNION, 1959
How could this grown man
love his aunt's blushing?
In a herd of cousins
I chafed in loafers, a white shirt,
absurdity my first
starched collar. Here, relatives
in name only, this roomful of near kisses,
a wasted afternoon. Grandmothers
sat behind their fat arms.
My mother played the organ.
He sang, "Home Again," hung
on my father's shoulder, drink spilling,
shirt untucked, a dog howling,
and wept. I couldn't stay.
I couldn't leave and begged
the day shorter, the hallway so full
of strangers he might never
find me to kiss me and praise
nothing I had done
and weep for a life I had
yet to live. “No relation to me,”
I boasted in the car going home,
and spoke ill of him
until my father mentioned
Iwo Jima and “enough.”
It meant nothing to me.
But since then I’ve learned
to read beyond myself and imagine,
sometimes to tears,
why our family fed him—
my stupidity and fear ignored—
and why they held him and were kissed by him
as one of our own.
