This One Especially
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Who was I following all day ending up
at the piers, dangerous and loose-planked?

Last night, my sister telling me,
“We have a brother somewhere”—

in this world a brother older
than the marriage that bore us.

And today, this one especially,
of all the many men I’ve watched

the most likely, so abandoned, not
ever brought riding with sisters

through the out-back preservation buffered by swamp,
so abandoned, not growing up in our ranch house—

where has he been, not protecting me,
always left behind,

poor brother whom I never kissed before,
what was he doing out there by himself,

mid-day, not working (like me),
needing also a haircut,

but clean,
I was happy to see that about him.