DAVID, MY BROTHER

That cold February morning when you came / I did not want

you / 'Take him back,' I said / My three-year-old heart

appalled at your bald head / And the fact that you were

not my sister / Instead you crept inside my heart / Still

I continued to send you away / galled because you dogged

my footsteps


Angered that you were ever the baby / Given the warm

and best / The single Sunday afternoon seat in our old Ford

pickup / I left to keep watch on ailing, aging Uncle Bert

My dentist trip denied / because our father promised you

the drive to New Germany / Unattended my tooth grew

sturdy, crooked and ugly


Your grubby little boy hands always

held the biggest half of his heart


On Wednesday mornings / in the Lunenburg County fog

I picked the long row of pickling cucumbers / Sharp spines

pricked my fingertips / You allowed to play / 'He's too young

for such hard work,' they said / My heart bled / All sense of

being loved quickly draining away / and dying


Yet years later / at some undefined moment / your poor

frail body racked and broken / you too lay dying

What was I doing / that moment your heart stopped beating

and I didn't know? / And when I heard / my heart broke too

Shattered into a million wet and glistening pieces

Thin shards that / even now / pierce my body


I hear your voice / See your smile / Meet you on occasion

in a grocery aisle / On the small square of earth / that marks

your grave / I ask Annette to choose two white roses

place them gently in the fading Labour Day light / Crickets

anoint the air with their sweet hymn / I am afraid my fingers

pricked by the rose / might not release the stem / Let you go

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