Member Poem

with their bags and parcels
unpacked with tales of how they journeyed
there to here, as if their sacrifice
would breach that ever-widening gap,
provide a bridge between our worlds.

We were expecting them. . .
uninvited though they were
as if each and every year
didn't offer up a new choice.

"We're family," they say, "and staying-in-touch
is important," they add while exploring the'
boundaries of our estate, none intentionally
closed off to them.

And so, as these gatherings go, we offer
our more recent harvest, release the corks
of vintage wine, listen to them go on and on
about their lives. . .

but this time, we have vowed, things will 
be different . . .And so we bid them a good night
with pleasant dreams, and pray the bed bugs do not
bite - as we release them from their basement lair.