Poetry Porch: Poetry

 

TIMES TOGETHER
by Robert K. Johnson

(for my brother)

After we again arrange
what’s left of our brittle bones
on a couch, why do you
insist our talk be only
about sports, new tv shows,

and your prettified memories
of our childhood home.
Why do you lock up,
as if inside a chest
wedged under an attic’s eaves,

the words that would describe
your life’s deepest satisfactions
and regrets, loves and losses.
Why do you always stay
distant from me—despite

what hovers shadow-close:
the day when one of us
will silently look down
into the other’s coffin—
brothers who have yet to meet.


Copyright © 2011 by Robert K. Johnson.