Josie Price
First: lost that tender living timbre–
my brother’s tenor register
singing Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,
lost his darling face wearing such coy joy to know
how happy my heart was to hear again
his perfect pitch then and there, walking on the stumbling
rambling cobblestone veining through the century
-old cemetery, our twin-long wings–
wingspans intertwined to save us both
from falling. Lost the feeling of being
the reason he’s smiling. This path we traced together
so frequently his final weeks walking–oh I
didn’t quite realize we were really down
to his final days walking. Graveyard diagonal
from his first-owned home, his final room.
Kitty-corner from the corner where he passed.
I could look out from behind his living
room window and see the exact grass
he would come to be covered
under. After the fire how fast
I lost my patience, my last willingness to suffer
fools. Just tell me how to find any
hours in which to do so after
holding him through his last afternoon.
The fire is what I’ve come to call
the catastrophe of that cancer. Its tinder
went up quickly. Took too much. Consummately consumed
with such greed and haste the vast wild landscape of his life,
my loved one I loved most.