For my half- brother, who was lost.

Did you think you'd find

Your mother again.

Between the redwoods?

They are colossal.

She climbs easily,

Hand moving to brush

Hair from her eyes.

Court shoes and her

Good purse over her arm.

Cram yourself, big man,

In the rust canyons

In the resinous hard fatherhood

And spreading crown of the

Redwood Pines,

Splinters digging deep

In your hide.

Ten years old, watching the 

Colour leave her face

Fade to blue.

Those weren’t candies in her

Broken hands.

Dad, I did something stupid

The gun was mine when I enlisted

It follows Chekhov’s plan

Four in the morning thinning

Through an amber haze.

Drink it to the lees, Ulysses

Spin the barrel.

The ship is waiting in the harbour

A small ship,

More like a rowboat, brother.

Rosa, Rosa sweet mother of

Roses

Never knew stigmata to go

Right through the skull

Oh God

No one to hold him,

No mourning cause no one knew

Him, anymore.

Dad, I did something stupid

Dad

Mesmered stillness after

The shot blooms in the night

Scent of redwood strong

And the gulf yawns wide.

Fold the flag around your

Purple heart.

Now she’ll never leave your side.