There's an older brother on the hill
and the little one buried
given in spirit to red summer

Maybe the words came from a film
A blade needs dulling and there's hope
of melodrama in the downcast eyes

But it's beginning to rain
His leather glove drips clay water
and the family doesn't own a tv

My father adjusted the crooked metal
above ours, and I watched Fred Rogers
sing about the anger humming in my ears

When the static gave ground,
I dug fingernails into the piled rug
olive. drab. corrosive. All hail King Friday

On Sundays we drove past signs-
brown as tree trunks, words burnt orange
dividing the cragged Adirondacks

The older brother is past gratitude
for rain that hides his visions
and how they echo the clouds

In black our man makes heavy
purposed strides to the umber hilltop
You can only stall so long

(When 1990’s thief stole the
Oldsmobile Sedan, he made
some distance and surveyed
the back seat:
Props, puppets, a sweater.
Nobody but nobody
is immune when the pangs explode
like impossible starlight in a cave
Mr. Rogers found his car
returned the next morning)

What else is what remains
I can still see my father's profile
unshaven, and the truck's torn vinyl

My hand won't be balm to his shoulder
and it won't be light. It will be a promise
of time, gathered in the fading color.

To my dark-haired light-eyed L-train pixie with the sun in your mouth the pert flashing lashes and ingenue legs crossed delicately at the ankles- I’m sorry if I stare. It’s a problem ever since I came out wet and wide-eyed gaping at the helpful nurses with their white cleavage that never gave me the chance to cry and I can’t guarantee that in ten years I’ll be attenuated to the faint secondary lines tracing down your slim limbs or the little wrist I imagine encircling with lumbering convex thumb and index while you cradle The New Yorker and raise the toe of one sandaled heel to graze the outside of the worn khaki office pants in slow audacious circles implying a universe of stars and I whisper something in your small clean ear that gives rise to an impish grin spurring sly corners of your lips telegraphing teasing intentions and rolling me over like a train on the flat prairies where Indians hunting buffalo could only watch in fascination or pretend nonchalance at what was about to change them forever but I don’t pretend anything I’m too old for that twenty-five is past the point of feigned composure and I whisper something more that puckers the beginnings of your grin because it’s a little too risqué here in the underground even by your alarmingly liberal tastes and even in the throes a man should take hold of himself but I choose to believe you’re secretly pleased that I’m occasionally beyond such limits and won’t leave for wide-shouldered square-jawed rich-white heroes and think yes, something with an even keel might be worth trying on, something whose tongue wags less when it’s covetous and who might leave you of all people a little pleasantly uncertain because let’s confess, God put us together but gave you the ball and the court, made me something that must repeat a promise not to fall too deep, not to admit a mystic belief in extremes to anyone but myself in dark hours if you’ll only trust there’s some modicum of moderation latent in my chemicals made to regulate these awful salacious whims when they threaten to swamp the poor beach in tsunamis and jag-toothed sharks and with time recede to regular tides overlapping their bounds only once or twice in a blue moon but on balance free of that unreliable word that awful haunting hunting dog I’ve been escaping over months and years that word unreliable my little elfin charm and one day I’ll watch you sunlit silhouetted by our picture window and the whole house translucent transoms and open oriels and when you turn I’ll melt my face to the world’s most benign smile and consult my newspaper or gently correct a child spooning soggy messes onto the covered table playing the good mate like a method actor so forgive me today pixie love if I take the pink lobe of your sweet sugar ear between my teeth just to see the delicious O of your shocked red mouth and make tiny indents you can touch for a fading moment with the whorled tips of reproachful fine fingers.