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.