Family
is a serious business

I am tolerated
- not much more -
at the seasonal gatherings
of Anna's greater family;
my own antecedentia shrunk
all but to oblivion

It's a tribal thing

Only the cat gulps me whole

Elsewhere
I'm coated thinly
across living room conversations
and kitchen table chatter
from somewhere else:
someone else

risking it all
by bringing in Danish hikers
in a German auto camper
from distant realms
of my privacy,
to buzz
through family and tribe
like irritating mosquitoes,
whose experiences no one
much desires,
over-populating living room
and kitchen area
with their physical bodies
and psychic minds

I best re-establish my becoming
non-invasive position
of a considerate distance,
like a faint wind
from the sea
in all that sunshine,
non-disturbing
to the established, non-questioned ways
of family and tribe,
cautiously dressing
in the colours and sentiments
of the surroundings,
not sporting any B/W op pop jacket
or shiny red Elvis Costello shoes,
keeping a peripheral attitude
at a fitting, non-offensive altitude,
the cat my confidant

Time is rocking me,
anyway,
far past habit & sanity,
faint recollections of Harley Davidsons
and 1950's motels
with Elvis Presley jukeboxes
playing Tryin' To get To You
and You're So Square
flowering
on the far side
of myself,
people lighting up
and dying down,
plans blowing off
like sign posts
in a hurricane,
making big holes
in families and tribes,
celebrating a coming and going
of all sorts of kinds,
love and old faces punctuated
by heart beats,
digitally digitized,
sun storms and sandstorms
making appearances
between eyes and ears
of half-breeds and double-doers

Perhaps I'm unkind,
but doth harbour noble thoughts
and gentle dreams

I am the risk I run

I am my finality,
beyond diaries

The cat listens to the moon