The Lost Brother

Something is missing.
Search and search
And search again.
We were walking along.
Brother got lost. Just like that.
Sister noticed.
We kept walking.
Did we remember who he was?
(One of the drugged? The miscarried? The enslaved? The massacred?)
So we nearly stopped trying.

Reach and reach
And reach again.
But really, really
Settle.
Then reach again.

Slave to appetite, slave to reason
As contradictory as Jefferson
Bound by the original promise and the original lie
Increasingly clear-headed, increasingly deaf
We founder.

He was three once.
Bright-eyed, unexpected,
A face no one could imagine,
Utterly unique as a moment
Then he was older, older,
Silver-haired, forgotten.

Is the atmosphere doing this?
Solar flares, something in the water,
Or our own ingenuity
Fashioned into machines and information?

At the cave
Where no breath breathes
An old voice reigned.
The old man inside myself
Said, “I am here.”
Said, “No one is here and not your brother.”
Said, “The wind is nothing but the wind.”
The wind’s journeys never stop.

It would be good, good,
If he would find me.

Jeffrey Levy © Copyright, 2020