Only Yesterday
We’re here together, my brother, on this
land that raised us, rinsing years
From the worn siding, filling cardboard boxes
with photo albums and Thanksgiving linens,
The grandkids are splashing in the creek,
feet slipping on mossy rocks, fingers
Clutching for handholds and crayfish, laughter
leaping between those timeless grass banks
And you look at me and smile and say,
that was us only yesterday.
Forging our world in those same waters,
and the boats to sail them, bending branches
Into shelters, ruling realms, we were kings
shaping visions, no wonder
We both grew up to love Lord of the Rings,
two-week sequences of Monopoly
Spread out on the floor, do not disturb,
adding money and changing the rules
To make it last longer, we didn’t know
that’s how it really worked in the real world.
We were sprawled on the carpet one night
after dinner, voices and silverware mingling
Familiar in the food-warm kitchen,
homework on the floor and heels in the air,
Our heads together against the old stereo
listening to Kenny Rogers and you told me
Yellow meant coward and I told you
I knew that, even though I didn’t;
I never wanted you to think you knew more
just because you were three years older.
Years circled us and we circled each other,
the youngest two, playing chess, waging wars
Over everything from cereal to car space, but
I think I made you laugh sometimes and
I know you calmed my reckless edges and
it was good to know you were in the next room
When the nights were sleepless even if
we never said it, and in the mornings
You made the best pancakes.
I still can’t make pancakes.
We climbed from my window one night
to lie on the porch roof, two heartbeats
On a breathless black night, you were
showing me the constellations,
That’s Cassiopeia, you said, you arm
tracing letters in the sky, and I loved it
For the way it sounded and thirty years later
I still smile when I see it, and you still
Show me constellations when the world is
dark, your arm tracing letters in the void.
I wonder if someday we’ll stand
in the world beyond this one, looking back
At this Monopoly game gone on too long,
shifting sequences and new songs and
Laughter leaping between creek banks that
no longer hold us, but like Frodo and
Sam just glad to be here with someone
at the end of all things, and maybe
You’ll turn to me and smile and say,
that was us only yesterday.
