My Brother is the Poem

My brother is the poem that exists,

still busily writing itself

in the hills of my hometown.

He leaves for work, welding

in leather and heat and without

a single complaint, because, hell!

He needs the job.

He strings out verse and stanza,

tripping over the meter

on seventy acres of God's creation.

Don't let them mine you too,

Big Brother.

It's with rhythm and flow that

he pays the bills and loves the wife and

suffers the pain of parenthood that stabs

with its cliche sword, double-edged.

Who knew? Who predicted

snowflakes and razorblades?

My brother, cigarette lit and smoke circling,

is the poetry falling

to earth, right there,

in Eastern Kentucky, while I

only call myself a poet, writing

in the air conditioned suburb, pretending

I got out, when I never did,

not really, anyhow.

Years pass and miles unroll like

so much butcher paper 

down the holler, but my body still grows roots

back home, there, in Nat's Creek,

Daniel's Creek, Homer's trailer,

white house with black shutters,

minnow fishing, snake killing,

coal mining with the black lung,

family and the most Primitive of

Baptist churches, where

my soul gets fed, and only then

can the poem

grow branches.

HT