The Aunts                                      

They move in slow circles, the women,
their years amounting to lives and deaths
Remember the funerals and weddings

The children poured from them
as if their wombs were hatcheries
and the ocean needed filling,
or there were too few fish
in the waters for life to eat
and the nets
that cast in all the boys and girls of their making
needed more than God could possibly give

In the sun or rain or clouded snow,
they worked the kitchens, cooked and sang
In the ice or heat or storms that passed,
they set the tables, served and spoke
words that food and fire brewed

Dark setting in and dark taking
the lightest of lives to death,
but that was not the end of it

The processions were pauses only
for breath to catch the breathers at rest
in the long run it takes to hold the whole together

Up to their arms over shoulders,
flung into life, full force
where the sun smacks your eyes
and every flavour tasted is them

You love these women because their strength
made all tender life stronger,
and the lives torn from a hold on earth
went knowing the fiery chains they snapped from
 

Grandfather Lee                                  
 

Sitting like the Great Wall of China
as if rooted in defence
against the last few days
that will invade his lungs,
the grandfather of these children
accepts from one a bowl of rice

The immense earth and stone of his eyes
sees them in North American play
and does not blink when a frisbee
glides over his fortress of a skull

It is all so seemingly irreverent,
except nobody says, "Sorry, Pops"
Nobody says sorry at all

A wisdom greater than his years
steps around him into the future