The cousins tumbled and rumbled
in stripes and checks, all primary colors,
flop tail over teakettle, whirligigs in high wind,
shrills and shrieks sirening through my house.
Although having never met before,
___________kenned that they were blood.
The melee evoked the fifteen cousins
who peppered our Bronx parish
when we were kids.
Today, my double-cousin, Paddy,
regales me with mother tales.
Called by our fagged-out Irish cousins
to come and take her home.
Next to her on Aer Lingus,
______________Paddy feigns sleep
as she announces to all the benighted
passengers close enough to hear,
I scrubbed floors til my knees bled to put him,
my big shot Yankee son, through Fordham,
and knelt each morn and eve
on the same bloodied knees
to pray for his parsimonious soul.
Won't even buy his mother a drink.
___________His fault, she had to pass the hat
promising the passengers renditions
of Foggy Dew and Mountains of Mourne.
______________Jesus, Paddy cries,
I should have shipped her in a crate.
I laugh, weep, nod, can hear her drone
as though I am her seat mate.
And Paddy and I grateful as milked cows
we can laugh at it all today.
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