Aubade
Nothing moves in my brother this morning.
He's a skellig rising out of the sea
too craggy and steep to climb
and battered by wind.
Even if you could, all you'd find
is a hut as small as a hive,
in this hermit's place
full of cinders.
This brother who won't look me in the eye right now,
sitting in his white shirt ready for work,
all the beer he put away last night
now choking us both.
He coughs
a dry bark over his shoulder
and I send a soft one back
through the poisonous cloud
expelled after each puff.
This is my brother's ritual at dawn in his kitchen,
hunched alone in a small pool of light:
round the tip of a Marlboro off,
sweeping the ashtray with it
between small sips of steaming coffee,
a quick tap on the edge of the glass, then pinch the filter
and lift it again to meet the power of pursed lips.
Power in a small mouth
that he keeps closed
better than I ever could.
I want to tell him
he looks like a swan in that shirt,
the wild ones at Coole that Yeats wrote about,
the swans pulled away from home on powerful currents,
the park swans with their wings clipped,
the ones who hiss and nip to save themselves from madness,
but he'll have none of that today or any day.
Well I know.
Instead we stand in the mist on the shore
and I kiss him a child's squeaky peck on the cheek
as he gathers up his sorrow and goes adrift,
on the long day of work ahead.
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