Thursday, September 2, 2010

A Poem for my brother

We came from the same spool
for my brother Jon

We came from the same spool.
Fibers connected in fireside ghost stories,
cardboard castles, daisy chains, mud pies, trees climbed.
There is no before you; there should be no after.
Always we shared a special glimpse of
what we might have been if a different day
was conception.

Our threads in one canvas,
weaved filaments of moments and time;
kicking each other under the table, your first crush and mine, heights on a door-frame.
I am not me without you.
I always imagined a woody porch to
rock on while we laugh and correct our versions
of yesterday.

Together we built a tapestry
shaped and driven by separate paths:
Romances, rebellions, moves, marriage, sorrows, serenity.
We begin each other.
Our unique sameness and difference
mapping out the landscape of those who came before
and after.

Snipped from that spool,
our very ends carry the other.
They hum alive, no matter how vast the canvas becomes.
In this tapestry we are intertwined irrevocably.
Touching forever
at the junctions of our souls.