I gave my cousin my last hug
he was never a hugging man
but that day he hugged like my mom
who he had taken care of for all those years,
he was Jim and I was Jimmy
and in that hug he handed over
all the imperfect roots of our family tree
the smudged lines of what we had come from

On my way out of Paducah
past the formica plant and the river refinery
I took the slow road to Kuttawa and Beaver Dam
crossed the Green at Rockport and on up
through the High Lonesome of the strip mines
that Big Bertha gave us, right on to Leitchfeild,
the last town before I hit the four-lanes
to make serious business of getting home;
sometimes I closed my eyes to see JIm’s breaths
as I imagined them now to be

In that town named for a septic drainage trench
I got lunch at the Farmers Feedmill, being 
the only customer at that oddball hour of two
the waitress sat with me and we talked cousins,
she had loved hers and it was the real deal, not
that something-to-be-made-fun-of-shit.   Then
to celebrate our 250th anniversary she brought out
a little American flag stuck in my cold slaw cup