He recalls his brother used to walk the rocks
in bare feet, leg muscles bunched and
hair long and loose, head tilted up to sky.
Heavens were unbearably far, earth a burden.
They made a fifteen year journey from
childhood to adult but it seemed beyond time,
was their time, separate from the slow footed pack.

No one dared deny the larger stories,
how his brother could fish with his hands,
call fox from its den and elk from the
shadows, conjured from perfection into fields,
alert yet perplexed. And girls in his dreams
whispered apologies for not finding him sooner.
Many people followed him into morning, past dusk.

Or this is what was believed and some say
imagined, but they didn’t know all. How he
investigated variables, lived outer limits,
puzzled out planetary maps and knew the arc
of a symphony of stars. It was trying to
be the younger, to desire a man’s wisdom,
be radiant as moonlight and tough as hide.

Stop desiring, big brother showed and said,
just live it, meaning do a thing, don’t pine
for it so now this is what second brother does.
Those days are half-erased when they both
would sling rocks and drop secrets
into undertow of the aged, roiling river.
He, the one left, walks rocks, runs fishing boats.

But his brother went up mountain to build a
hideaway between salmon bones and bear claws,
has turned contemptuous of gravity’s ties.
But he is no longer innocent of loss, for
he has abandoned his only brother, left the scene,
gone so far that smoke signals no longer rise and speak.