The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Week: Honoring My Brother

Yestesday was National Sibling Day and I honored my sister with a poem. Today I will honor my brother. There were many times we sat side by side reading a book. My brother taught me how to read. I think we must have read  The Cat in the Hat together fifty times. We are still moving through "the ten thousand acts that will encumber the rest of our days." I am pleased I will enjoy those acts with him as my next door neighbor and won't have to travel far when "another laughter sounds back."

Two Set Out on Their Journey
by Galway Kinnell

We sit side by side,
brother and sister, and read
the book of what will be, while a breeze
blows the pages over—
desolate odd, cheerful even,
and otherwise. When we come
to our own story, the happy beginning,
the ending we don’t know yet,
the ten thousand acts
encumbering the days between,
we will read every page of it.
If an ancestor has pressed
a love-flower for us, it will lie hidden
between pages of the slow going,
where only those who adore the story
ever read. When the time comes
to shut the book and set out,
we will take childhood’s laughter
as far as we can into the days to come,
until another laughter sounds back
from the place where our next bodies
will have risen and will be telling
tales of what seemed deadly serious once,
offering to us oldening wayfarers
the light heart, now made of time
and sorrow, that we started with.

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