for my baby brother
peaceful as any mountain meadow,
this chance to walk a city block
with sirens and screeching trains
and flashing lights and car alarms
and my arm tucked tightly into yours
Posts Tagged ‘brother’
One Other Version of Heaven
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, city, connection, country mouse, sister on September 27, 2025| 8 Comments »
Though It’s Messy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, election, love, oppostion, sibling, sister, surrender on November 13, 2024| 4 Comments »
I don’t know why we were fighting,
my brother and I, we were always fighting,
but he was already bigger than I, stronger, too,
so I did what I could and yanked hard
on a hank of his hair, twisting my fist
to increase the tension and cause him more pain.
He howled, and I delighted in his howl,
loving my cruelty, wanting to hurt him
as much as I felt he’d hurt me.
Even now, though I cannot recall
what he did or said, I remember the rise
of indignation, that hot flood of righteousness,
that cruel joy in feeling I was giving him back
what he deserved. Oh young version of me,
you would not believe me now when I tell you
you will both surrender your battling to forge
a fierce and loyal love. Not that you don’t disagree.
You are still so opposite in almost every way,
every way save one—your certainty
you can love each other through anything.
Through elections, through divorce,
through the death of a child, through the death
of your father, the loss of your hope.
You can love each other even when
you’re furious with each other,
when you both know the other is wrong.
Believe me, sweetheart,
the world only gets smaller.
The stakes only get higher. God, it’s messy,
so much worse than mean words,
so much more than pulled hair.
The story only gets larger.
We are all each other has.
Y-Linked Inheritance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, father, football, legacy, love on September 29, 2024| 4 Comments »
My brother paces the length of the football field,
following the play, unable to sit. I watch him
pause in the end zone, hands in his pockets,
eyes focused to the game, chin up, body tense.
How many times did I watch my father watch him
the same way he now watches his own sons play?
“Hold your blocks,” he yells, his voice hoarse
and deep, full of certainty from his own days
in cleats. “Come on, Defense,” he growls,
half admonishment, all encouragement,
and I fall in love all over again with my father,
now dead, and my brother, so alive, how they give
of themselves as if every moment is a goal line.
I hear how every hoarse syllable, barked out
in harsh urgency, carries inside its violence
an almost unbearable tenderness,
a spiraling toss of light.
For My Brother on His Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, brother, wish on September 30, 2023| 2 Comments »
How many wishes end this way,
like this gossamer froth of milkweed
matted with brittle brown bits.
I think of your beautiful heart,
how soft, how wounded it is.
Lately, almost everything makes me think
of your heart. I pick up
this white milkweed seed. Cradle it
in my palm, detritus and all.
I honor the beauty of your
wish. Matted as it is, bedraggled.
God, it’s so brave to wish.
An Incantation for My Little Brother’s Pillow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, pillow, sister, support on September 19, 2023| 4 Comments »
(on the night before a difficult day)
Because I can’t be there now to hold him,
I will my brother’s pillow to be more soft,
will it to offer him the deep magic
no pillow actually owns—will it
to bring him dreams in which
the light is gold and the air
smells of dark violets and
white trillium like it did
when we were kids.
I want his dreams
to feel so real, so
full of love he
wakes with
a smile as
inevitable
as today.
Deep Peace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, compassion, love, suffering on July 31, 2023| 6 Comments »
I would carry your ache
if I could. Would carry the throb
and the raw fury, would dress
your wounds with a salve of full moon
and the gold of the tall summer grass.
I would wrap you in the softest song,
and whisper blood-true prayers
so quietly they resemble the sound
of petals falling—something more felt
than understood. And because
I cannot carry your ache, I do
what the helpless do. I love you.
With my own broken open heart,
I love you. With every breath, every blink,
I Iove you. There is a peace
that comes when we deeply
lean into the ache. I wish you
that courage, that peace.
I Will Always Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, grief, love on October 24, 2021| 6 Comments »
And when I could not stand—
when the weight of life
was more than I could hold alone—
my brother held me in his big arms
and said in my ear, I’ve got you.
Though grief expanded
and increased inside me
like a terrible mutinous bloom,
I’ve got you, he said.
Though it swelled and threatened
to swamp us, he wrapped me
in a tenderness equally vast.
I’ve got you, he said, as I wept.
I’ve got you, he said, infusing me
with a love so robust I knew
I could fall into even the deepest sorrow
and still he would catch me,
would catch me, would hold me,
would hold me as long as he had arms.
When I was most afraid to be alone,
I was not alone. I’ve got you, he said,
and I fell and I fell, the world a dark rush,
and he caught me, my brother,
and held me as all around us
what I thought I knew of the world
slipped away, slipped further away.
Delivering on a Promise
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, death, IOU, letter, postcard, promise, sister on October 12, 2021| 7 Comments »
Perhaps three years ago
my son gave me three paper slips,
each one an IOU with his name and phone number
and the promise to do whatever I asked him to do.
I saved the slips in my bathroom drawer
where they mingled with hair ties
and toothpaste tubes,
until a month ago, when I wrote on one
in small blue cursive,
Please send a sign to your sister you love her.
And today, two months after his death,
a single postcard came, addressed to my daughter,
a postcard sent from Minnesota
but written in his hand.
It doesn’t say I love you. It’s a photo
of an old marketplace in Cusco,
a city he visited one week before he died.
He tells her about it, says it’s a place he enjoys.
And there, on the four-by-six cardstock,
unfurling between his handwritten words
is the unsaid message she seldom heard—
You’re important to me.
I love you. I miss you.
I’m grateful you’re in my life.
Consider this poem a thank you letter
addressed to what I can’t understand.
Thank you for finding a way to say
the words that couldn’t be said.
Thank you for letting an absence
tell a larger story. Thank you
for unusual postage.
For wonder. For special delivery.
United
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, diversity, division, love, sister on September 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Over thirty years later
I still return to the night
when my brother and I
stood in the kitchen and argued
the merits of Grape Nuts,
versus Cap’n Crunch.
Potassium, potassium, potassium.
I still hear him chanting
the one nutrient his cereal
had more of than mine.
Breakfast was the least
of our differences,
but it taught us to laugh
as we disagreed
so that later, when the stakes
were higher—
presidential elections
and gun laws—
we could argue till I cried,
then snuggle on the couch.
Though we seldom agree,
though we will forever cancel each other’s votes,
though I will never eat Cap’n Crunch,
I’ll sit with him as he eats it,
laughing, shaking my head,
grateful he teaches me so much
about how I am not.
He will celebrate me and buy me
any damn cereal I want.
Though we disagree about almost everything
except how much we love each other—
we are two threads in a civilization
that would try to makes us believe
we couldn’t be one cloth—
but we are, woven tight, we are.
Riding Bikes with My Brother at Fifty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, summer on June 26, 2020| 7 Comments »
We ride on the rusty old bikes
in the swelter of June,
legs pumping, waving at strangers,
the wind making a kite
of our laughter—
The eight-year-old version of me
would never believe
about how happy we are—
she’s still ratting her brother out
to the recess guard.
But here we are, like two
young kids, playing in summer—
sticky hands and suntanned arms,
the years an ocean,
our love a boat.
At the End of Les Miserables
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, family, love, musical, sister, theater on February 1, 2020| 1 Comment »
And again tonight, despite injustice and hatred,
Jean Valjean learns to love. And again tonight,
in the face of fear and prejudice, he finds kindness.
And again tonight, I weep as he nears his death.
I couldn’t say for whom I am weeping—for him,
for the girl he adopted, for the mother who died,
for the empty chairs, for the whole cast
who remind me too much of the world we live in.
For myself, of course, and my longing to do
what is right. But more than anything, I weep
with the memory of watching this very same scene
thirty years ago, sitting beside my brother,
both of us baptized in tears as Fontine and Eponine
sing behind Valjean, reminding him it is no small miracle
to love someone. I couldn’t have known then
how this would be the memory I’d return to again
and again when I think of my brother. There we are,
young and full of competing ideals, holding each other,
laughing through our crying, ready to meet the world
and each other tear-stained and open to news of grace.
The Night Before Thanksgiving
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, memory, poem, poetry, self image, sister, thanksgiving on November 27, 2019| 2 Comments »
Forty years later, my brother and I
go to the Jewel to buy evaporated milk
and egg nog, and part of me doubts
I will remember the way that we scoured
the produce aisle for green beans. Then again,
who could say why I remember
with incredible clarity the moments
when I was ten and we had just finished
the great turkey feast and my brother and I,
as we loved to do, asked to be excused,
but instead of leaving the dining room,
we simply lay on the floor beneath the table
with our feet up on our chairs
and conversed with each other
there across the green and white shag.
I don’t recall what we said or what we wore,
and it was no important moment, but
I remember the feel of it:
I knew we were together in this—
this moment, this family, this life,
so much so that forty years later
the memory of these ten minutes
is as real to me as the scent of the pumpkin pie
my sister-in-law baked tonight.
How is it that such a short snippet of time
defines us? How it comes to be
the moment we return to again and again
to remind ourselves who we are,
who we love, and why we are here—
those moments, stolen, and still
they give us back ourselves. Even now
in the produce aisle of Jewel, I can feel it—
the carpet against my cheek, can smell
the cranberry salad, can hear my grandfather
and grandmother laughing over our heads,
my brother’s eyes widening, mischievous, so alive.
After the Elementary School Concert
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, communication, daughter, kindness, parenting, poem, poetry, sibling, sister, son on December 14, 2018| 2 Comments »
And after the boy
hugs his sister
and tells her
she did a great job,
after he wipes
her tears and holds
her and wraps her
in his awkward arms,
after she leans
into him, their
sapling trunks
sloping toward
each other,
I want to tell him
how proud I am
of the ways
he is growing,
want to affirm
how much depends
on love, want
to say I see his tenderness,
but the soil beneath
them is unstable,
precious, and my voice
is full of heavy clouds,
so I wait until
they sway apart,
then I walk closer
and manage to say
through invisible rain,
It’s time.
Let’s go home.
Sitting Beside My Brother at the Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, death, family, grief, loss, poem, poetry, sister on June 1, 2018| 3 Comments »
There was a time when I’d pull his hair out
if he sat too close to me on the couch.
Now, I curl into his right side,
lean my head on his shoulder,
feel the trembling of his chest
as he weeps. How good it feels
to be close to him as we grieve.
How familiar, the shape of his head,
the heft of his hand as he reaches for mine.
How deeply right, this leaning
into sorrow together.
I Always Love Him, But There Was
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, Les Miserables, poem, poetry, sisiter, theater on September 29, 2017| 4 Comments »
that Sunday afternoon in Madison
when we went to brunch, then found our seats
in the theater where the French Revolution
is waging again and a man falls in love
and the woman dies and her daughter is horribly
enslaved, and my brother, a bear of a man,
the heavyweight champion wrestler who
routinely pinned behemoths to their backs
and threw keggers to “make me clean
the floors,” my brother beside me
cried enough tears for the whole globe,
a lightning rod for sorrow, as if his heart
were big enough to take on the burdens
of the whole world, how I loved him then,
his face radiant and glistening,
both of us weeping near to heaving
and holding each other’s hands, smiling
at each other in the dim light, both of us
seeing ourselves as the other as the players
built a barricade and all our walls fell down.
Easter Magic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, easter, poem, poetry on March 27, 2016| 1 Comment »
There were years
when the Easter Bunny
set out a wrench and a flashlight
beside the baskets—remember,
brother, the pleasure we took
in the hiding and finding
long after the years of believing
in magic were over?
Eggs we floated in plastic bags
in the backs of the toilet.
Eggs duct taped to the inside
of the chimney flue. Eggs
in the vents, inside the piano,
we delighted in what a bit of invention
could do. Tonight I walked out
of the house after dinner
to take the recycling up to the road,
and there, to the west, an outpouring
of light made me stop and stare
and inwardly, sweetly erode.
In a world so bent, I sometimes forget
that the magic is always
inside us. We have all the tools
that we need. All we need to do
is keep trying to find it.
For My Brother, Who Must Have a Whole Closet of Soft Green Shirts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, gift, giving, green, memory, poem, poetry, sister on December 12, 2014| 5 Comments »
For Christmas, I want to buy you the softest green
shirt, green the color of Wisconsin in springtime,
so green we could almost fall into the color
and find ourselves running once more to the lake,
cane poles in hand, to see if the fish are biting.
Or we might find ourselves in the dark green woods
behind the neighbor’s house where we used to dig
in the old junk yard for shards of blue and white porcelain.
But green is my favorite color, not yours. And those days
of running down the great grassy hill are gone, are gone
and faded. You like blue. Forgive me, brother, for buying
you again for Christmas another green shirt. Oh hush,
can you hear them, the cicadas, trilling through the leaves
of the old willow tree, serenading the warm summer night?