"Family Ties" by Santiago Baca

Mountain barbecue. 

They arrive, young cousins singly, 

older aunts and uncles in twos and threes, 

like trees. I play with a new generation 

of children, my hands in streambed silt 

of their lives, a scuba diver's hands, dusting 

surface sand for buried treasure. 

Freshly shaved and powdered faces 

of uncles and aunts surround taco 

and tamale tables. Mounted elk head on wall, 

brass rearing horse cowboy clock 

on fireplace mantle. Sons and daughters 

converse round beer and whiskey table. 

Tempers ignite on land grant issues. 

Children scurry round my legs. 

Old bow-legged men toss horseshoes on lawn, 

other farmhands from Mexico sit on a bench, 

broken lives repaired fro this occasion. 

I feel no love or family tie here. I rise 

to go hiking, to find abandoned rock cabins 

in the mountains. We come to a grass clearing, 

my wife rolls her jeans up past ankles, 

wades ice cold stream, and I barefooted, 

carry a son in each arm and follow. 

We cannot afford a place like this. 

At the party again, I eat bean and Chile 

burrito, and after my third glass of rum, 

we climb in the car and my wife drives 

us home. My sons sleep in the back, 

dream of the open clearing, 

they are chasing each other with cattails 

in the sunlit pasture, giggling, 

as I stare out the window 

at no trespassing signs white flashing past.