my brother has bonethin wrists, and in this at least we
are alike.
past a certain point separation is to be calculated not
in distance but in time; we stretched it like dewdrops on
spiderwebs at dawn, and all of its facets shone,
and
there is something to be said
about a sun setting on us both at the same time,
though dusk falls late here where the hills wait for
night like hands cupped to the sky during a drought.
yesternight a waltz came to me in the dark, creaking and
whirling and grinning like a pair of skulls on a puppeteer’s
strings, weaving in under the door between echoes from
the living room TV.
my brother has bonethin wrists and fingers like a pianist’s,
and for a minute under the kitchen lights he looked
like he had so many of them, fives and ten and even more,
as his hands rose and dipped like incense smoke over the
worn ivory keys of his new accordion, and the waltzes he’d
learned all by himself while so very far away swung outwards
from that red instrument on his chest, toothed and grinning, to
rip apart the spidersilk of my sleep.
