When My Brother Dies, and: Killeter Forest: Father McLaughlin's Well

When My Brother Dies

It happened already. It has happened five times          and will happen again. My brother is dead.                    We try to recover what he stole and start                              by making a list we can't finish.I've been living up and down the same riverbank          since I started having families. I stay on my                    side of the river, which makes our list full                              of half-truths. I will not cross the river.

They try to cross his hands across his chest,          but the hands keep falling. My brother's skin                    is older than my dead uncle's love for bees                              and sunlight, my uncle in the sunlight in his trailersaying they want me to leave, but I love it here,          spending days in the hallway once, fallen.                    My brother seems to love the satin sheets,                              his hands falling to touch them again.

When I lean my hands on the fancy wood,          I slip my brother a lollipop with a violet inside it.                    A sister is supposed to put something into the coffin                              to show love. So many nights we sat by the tvwhile he pawed a bowl of candy, nodding,          nodding and scratching at his face, his neck,                    as if plants had bitten him up. I don't know                              how to tell him what it means to live on a river.

I don't know yet that he will die again. The ice          lets go on the river and floats away like pool toys                    piloted by tiny children. Rivers fold into themselves,                              like oars into water like little boys hurt too muchand I want to tell the tiny children be careful,          but there is no time to grow to love them                    as they braid downstream. I walk home uphill,                              past the comfrey and the massive oak.

In the johnboat, my brother and I float and row.          Waterweeds skim the boat. We eat quartered                    oranges and lean our backs against the gunwales                    and rip worms onto tiny hooks. We forgetwhat is coming and act like there aren't          any more deaths to come. We are lazy.                    The water moccasin coiled under the seat                              keeps its mouth shut as we climb out.

Which death are my parents crying about          now? I wonder if it's motorcycle death, or locked-                    in-jail death. I hope it's shot-by-a-gunman death                              and not wasted-away death. Hypodermic needledeath is the one I know it always is, though. It's a blue          and translucent death, this time. We cry like our eyes                    are needles, the plunger pressed. We cry like sugar                              water and dirty apartments. There he goes again.

Here is another ice rink, another red-faced          olly olly in come free. I am telling on him again.                    He's dead again and look what he did, look                              how he won't wake up. Where does he keepgoing? He never packs a thing. The dog          eats the linoleum and his son shakes him                    to wake up, little daddy daddy, jabbing                              his father on the brown couch. We say He won't wake up.

                         It's a game it's a game?          his son asks and we say no, or practice saying no.                    This brother whose first parents disappeared                              like ghosts, this father who keeps dyingon couches and in vans knows how to do          this one thing, this laying back of the head,                    this wooden blanket from the waist down,                              this wooden blanket top door closing.

Killeter Forest: Father McLaughlin's Well

We cut through the forest to check the sheepon the far mountain and stop to fill our bottles.

Sitka spruce make a grid filled with moss.Above the holy water, on a shelf, this shrine:

baby toys, wrappers of pills; prayer cards;Star Wars posters; Jesus, his beard chipped,

pointing to his flaming heart; next to him,another Jesus, broken ankles, alabaster,

hollow and full of leaves, a hole clear throughhis chest; baby dolls, a cane, and facedown

there, another Jesus slumped beside the shotgunshells, packs of cigarettes, snow-globes...