Poetry | Fine, So I Am Different To My Brother

His first thoughts became mine,

We found them in the same mud,

They were ordered into lines

By the same flesh and blood.

I could be him, or so I thought,

Hugged his wife as if I was there

When he realised he loved her.

So his searching and vegetarianism,

His world exploring vision were in me,

Big thundery blood born rhythms,

All clan true and understood and free.

Until this year, he perched on a chair,

Held his old violin gently to his chin,

And drew the bow across the strings.

A sound floated in, a shape, a form,

I knew from somewhere, but not him.

I had to close my eyes, hold my breath

Not to cry at just how much I’d missed,

At this world he knew that I could only visit.

Grown, his spirit was a beautiful shape,

Not freshened, but a new pattern like words

Strung together in the tongue of sacred place.

I slipped in loss, but the score caught me

With truth in buried memory: once when

We were young we caught a butterfly,

He was this, and I was still me, because,

While I went to get a jar, my brother set it free.