The Brother From the More Distant Planet

My youngest brother calls the mother of

his babes, Mommy. An oddity

I consider in light of his own Mother

being six feet across the room

dribbling ice cream down the front of her

blouse, retelling stories of her mother

we've all gathered to remember.

A sister hovering between the kitchen and

the conversation, is becoming

more and more like her own,

a simmering pot, always on

the boil, about to spill

over from the constant interruptions

of siblings, her need to have

the final word no matter what....

The cobb salad of nieces and nephews,

husbands, wives, beaus, paramours,

and babes, sandwiched around a room

too small for any meaningful conversation,

reminds me of a day at the beach.

A throng of strangers I need to get through

to get where I'm going.

Somebody's tired puppy camped out under

the buffet table seems to have

it all figured out, far better than I

do. I can only envy him,

the way he manages

to keep the chaos at bay

long enough to drift off to sleep.

When the other brother, still drinking, slips

into the opening beside me,

I brace myself for the tide

of unrequited complaints some one

needs to listen to. I nod,

wishing I could be more like the puppy,

letting on I understand the aches,

as if they were my own misdiagnosed symptoms.

Language, the language, of the everyday world

is a wild untamed tongue, as far from

the disciplined dainty syllables I wrestle

into pedantic lines of life, as my brothers are

from any understanding of what it is I do

in the attic of my living spaces.

How, I wonder, have we come from

the same wilderness?

My reflections of our growing pains

seem to have sprung from a whole other place,

my years of sequestration, being

the split atom has me thinking of quarks,

how they view the quirks I've added

over the years, as if

I'm the brother from the other more distant planet.

The family is a curious engine, random parts

welded together from a heterogeneity

of makes and models, kept on the road

by the ingenuity and rough hands

of the master mechanic. Our father

likened these gatherings to

being in Babylon, the great confusion

of a tribe coming together

in the aftermath of Exodus.

Ken e Bujold

© 2022

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

Just love this family gathering. Amazing isn't it how different siblings can be. I am one of five. Yes, the tribe coming together. The last time our tribe met was at my mum's wake, in February, but I loved the occasion even though the sadness was there. An opportunity to get back to those roots and smile at how the plant has grown.

Chris

[Ken e Bujold]

can be. though just as often I am completely befuddled as to how we all came from the same womb, grew up in the same house, and yet seem to have views and such that would suggest we are all really just beamed idiots from 4 different planets. don't get me wrong I love my sibs, and we are close, not just because or timing, 4 1/2 yrs between the 4 of us. Just don't know what they are nattering about half the time. Maybe because I never had kids and spent a sizeable bit of my life poking about in foreign corners, while other than a trip to Aruba by my sister, and one trip reluctantly to Paris by a brother, they have never left the country, or seem to have any interest in doing so. I like to joke with Musica that I doubt they would even know where to remotely look to find Singapore on a map, and we've been together for 22 yrs

[Chris Shaw]

Well having children certainly is an experience. Mostly a blessing but not always:) I would imagine the travel must have been very enriching. Yep, I'm close to my sibs too, but we are all very different :)

[Lorry]

Families can be great... So I'm told, but I relate more to the pooch under the table, just looking for a bit of shut eye where I can dream of having a pre-selected family, who know that we don't all have to hear their brain dribbles, or what must watch show I "need" to watch, despite all of them knowing I don't have a TV, or any number of things that should be kept as thoughts and not spoken.
And they act like I'm the weirdo!
Okay, that might be true, but weird takes many forms and I would prefer it if they just accepted me for the dog under the table that I am 😊

[Ken e Bujold]

i hear you loud and clear Lorry. been gatherings where i very much wished i was the dog, even a few where i would have settled for being the table.

[softlyfall]

This is fabulous. I absolutely love it.
I love the language and the humor and the understanding.
Mostly I love the intelligence. It's so compelling

[Ken e Bujold]

it is my family :)))

[softlyfall]

Family is everything

[carl]

Great description of the hodgepodge that makes up a family. Great observation from the outside looking in. Particularly suited my fancy as I am the black sheep that left and stayed away. Always made the trip and time back home a really weird experience. My sister in-law once observed myself and two brothers sitting silently in the family room and made the comment, "Hey, look the brothers are visiting." Ours was a very fragmented group; due to no master mechanic on board, I suspect. Thanks for the post, a really good read.

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks for review and happy you could identify with the poem. Family's are indeed as you put it a hodgepodge. also love the image of the brothers visiting, which as i age is how I am beginning to think of myself and my two brothers, my sister and I talk often, though not always on the same wave length

[Elaine]

Ugh yes! I enjoyed this about family. And the dog!!!! Inspires me to want to jot down my own observations. Families are complicated and messy and real and awkward. A whole bunch of things. I was with you in that tight overcrowded room Ken!

[Ken e Bujold]

glad you enjoyed the banquet Elaine. Families are indeed messy and real, and very much in need of master mechanics to keep them running

[Coyote Poetry]

I understand the story in the poetry Ken.
"as if
I'm the brother from the other more distant planet."
My family. They all, have their odd-ball habits. Family reunions can be a WWE event. Thank you for sharing the amazing and entertaining poetry.
Coyote

[Ken e Bujold]

i think most family's are a bit like this one. as for the bro from the other planet...it has its upside...you can always just tune into another radio frequency

[Coyote Poetry]

I agree Ken. We don't have family reunions no-more. Too many odd balls in my loco family.

[Neville]

What an achievement .. I read this in awe and wonder whether you set out to craft something so intricately detailed and inclusive, or did it turn into one of those monsters we have all grappled with from time to time and just take lover? Whatever the case, as a lover of words and in particular of poetry, I reckon you pretty well nailed 'families' and their always unique but so oft familiar thumbprint .. A compelling read indeed and for so many reasons, but saddest of all when a members departure serves as the catalyst for such a coming together ......... Enjoyed by me to the hilt Ken.

Neville

[Ken e Bujold]

this one flowed out fairly easily. while a bit of a compilation of the family gatherings all of it is reality-based. The starting point was a news article I read about odd endearments people call their spouses, to which I added my baby brothers which I have always found odd and humorous. From there it was simply putting down on the page what is a typical Bujold family dinner

[redd Brick Keshner]

Love the way this felt and the way it took the reader in their reading to places and feelings and thoughts. An extended poetic thought brought to its furthest possible extension and still remain whole and cohesive. I too have family members that call their spouses aloud, 'dad' or 'mum' correspondingly; which is both quaint and bizarre in the same thought. My thoughts are properly fed. Thank you Ken. Freds.

[Ken e Bujold]

glad you like and recognized someone in the read Fred. Thanks for your kind words

[redd Brick Keshner]

Coming from a large brood on both sides of the family and town loads of extended relations, this is really close to personal experience!

[Ken e Bujold]

how large? my immediate is 3 sibs, 7 n's. but the bigger clan is 91 first cousins. when we assemble, smaller in size now due to attrition, but still enough we require a small hall.

[redd Brick Keshner]

Oh wow, when did I last count? My first cousins that side number 19, all with spouses and kids to add to that number. My dad is 3rd in a brood of 10 whose average number of kids are 5, so that's still plenty to deal with. LOL. More accustomed here to smaller and more intimate social gatherings.

[Ken e Bujold]

yes sir your family is definitely akin to mine, both from the lines of rabbits

[redd Brick Keshner]

That's probably why the Mad Hatter bears a strange semblance in my aura hahaha

[W. Barrett Munn]

A wonderful descriptive piece, Ken. It is my mother's side of our family as I grew. She was from a family with 9 children, and all those children had children, and almost all would gather every so often and I so wanted to be the puppy.

Winston

[Ken e Bujold]

tell me about it. I have 91 first cousins, 87 on my father's side. meeting of the clan, thinning now, is/was akin to gathering a small nation. Now, whenever it is time to call just the immediate family together, I cringe. Sibling differences are never ever truly forgotten, nieces and nephews and all theirs, including dates I can't be bothered to remember names of because the young seem to turn them over like we would pages of a newspaper. This weekend being Canadian thanksgiving I have the joy of such a gathering tomorrow. Thankfully I am not this year's host, so I can make my departure whenever the good and sociable aunt deems it as being acceptable.

[W. Barrett Munn]

Good luck. Hope you can escape early.