The Lost Brother

—for Matthew

Now that our mother has forgotten your name,
I see you everywhere.
In a movie, you’re the spy, swapping
one briefcase for another.
You get off buses just as I find my seat,
or I catch a glimpse of you, disappearing in a crowd.
Once I saw you at a Fourth of July fireworks,
another time, late one night
in Galway. When I wear the blue sweater
I bought there, I think of you. I’ve never mourned
for you the way I’ve mourned others,
and maybe that’s why. I was glad
you’d escaped your busted marriage,
left behind your bad choices
like a trail of crumbs to be eaten by birds.
I’ve dreamed you, living in a cabin
in the trees at the back of our old place,
reading Dostoevsky and writing poems.
I’m not cracked, I know you’re on that hillside
where we left you, your coffin turned away
from the marker because our mother
didn’t want your head down and feet up
for all eternity. Even that secret
has a way of animating you,
as if you might sit up, dust off your hands
with a that’s that,
and step back into your life.
Our common ground was always a raft
of ice. With you gone, it’s broken smaller.
Am I tired, after all these years,
of carrying you with me? I’m not.
You weigh nothing, a hole in my pocket.
I never forget that you’re not there.

Memorial

Iowa