Draft version of "A Very Private Song"

The night my brother died 

I waited for my mother to say goodnight 

I lay awake for hours, not knowing, 

But hearing grown-up voices, 

Talking softly, so softly… 

When the band of light 

Beneath my bedroom door 

Went out and she didn't come in, 

I started to call her,

"Mom,

      Mom

           Momaaaaaa."

Over and over as only a child would, 

Until at last, 

Several hours later, 

Several hundred years, 

Or so, she opened the door, 

I heard it click, and she stood there, 

Still slim then, and naked. 

I sat up and she sat down, 

She said, your brother's dead, 

And a few thousand years, 

Eternity, hell, and all spinning time, 

Passed by, 

The whole creation went on without us, 

While we looked at each other in the dark, 

And I thought, Catch me, 

And held out my arms. 

Who caught who?  That's what I wonder now. 

Like one of the newly resurrected, I am... 

I awake slowly in the dark, 

After midnight, but far yet from first light, 

A band of sleep wrapped tight across my forehead: 

Like justice wearing her blind, I am... 

I arise and walk, I am all feet, 

As I pass through rooms without walls, 

No walls at all, no sorrow, no joy, 

Until I hover over the bathroom sink, still mostly ghost. 

By the nightlight's glow 

I could see my face in the mirror — I do not look, I listen 

I listen to the murmur of aging pipes, 

the drip drop of the kitchen clock, 

filling buckets of time, 

and the soft slow alto notes 

of the Santa Fe crossing Grand. 

Well, God, look at this, 

My son's Catholic shirt soaking in bleach, 

Just where I left it and forgot. 

I pull a silver chain 

And with a small hiccup the sink drains, 

Now I am my hands, 

My fingers remembering this fabric, 

As if it were my own skin, flesh of my flesh. 

What does he do? 

What does he do, I wonder, 

As I hold the shirt before me. 

I take my nail brush and I scrub, 

Whist, whist, a paste of soap, 

Then rinse. 

I fold the shirt, and fold the shirt, 

And squeeze — this way there are no wrinkles, 

No sorrow, no joy, 

And then I know, 

Nothing is ever this certain in day light, 

Nothing at all. 

The computers are sleeping

Like cows on a summer night

Dreaming of numbers as varied

As blades of grass.

Milk pours out from organs of

Wire and magnetic tape

Each day but

Now they slumber

As I alone move through

The darkness

As the moon on a summer night.

Peter,

No one else knows you 

Like I do, 

And no one else sees 

The gentle eyes, 

The graceful hands, 

The lover's look, 

That I see,

  My baby, my joy 

  Just want you to know 

  That I love you.

               K.C.