The Aunts

I like it when they get together and talk in voices that sound like apple trees and grape vines, and some of them wear hats and go to Arizona in the winter, and they all like to play cards. They will always be the ones who say “It is time to go now,” even as we linger at the door, or stand by the waiting cars, they remember someone—an uncle we never knew—and sigh, all of them together, like wind in the oak trees behind the farm where they grew up—a place I remember—especially the hen house and the soft clucking that filled the sunlit yard.