Sending A Card (Poetry)

These are not my very best wishes —
this greeting — if I am being truthful —
is sent entirely out of habit
and because I don’t want it to be me
who breaks the thinned-out line
of our blood connection.

We have never been friends, as such —
merely second cousins who have kept in touch —
half a century of exchanging cards at Christmas
and on birthdays (the infrequent visits tailed off years ago)
now I’m having more and more why-on-earth-days
wondering if there’s any point —
should either of us bother?

You are — have always been —
much closer to my mother than to me —
her cousin first — mine after.
And it becomes harder to explain
this choosing a card for someone who
I hardly know —
sending love and signing my name
suggesting some residual affection
while so detached and, year by year
more strange.